I've seen posts by a person making scales out of paint stir sticks, so I'm fairly certain you could make them out of intricately carved wood just as well.

It seems to me that if the style you're going for is more of a "relief" style carving, this should be fairly easy to do in terms of getting the weight and size for the scales right. Simply take the original scales, have new ones made that are the same dimensions, but more "fat" on the curve. Then have your artist carve into the curve. The waste material subtracted would then bring the scales back to the proper weight for the blade. Once you've got the two pieces carved send them off to one of the skilled guys on this site to pin them onto your blade with nice fancy washers.

I think the only thing you'd have to worry about with this is the finish. The finishes I've seen on the custom work people are doing here tend to be heavy duty stuff that would be quite difficult to apply to something carved with intricate nooks and crannies. Since it's going to be in a bathroom and exposed to moisture on a regular basis you can't skimp on the finish, so this would definitely be the tricky part in my opinion.