Heraldic belt

This was a project I wanted to work on for a while and was a long overdue second payment for some seamstress work. It is a heraldic belt for Baroness Miriel du Lac (SCA). The belt is tooled and painted leather (the main belt is dyed black). The hardware is from Billy and Charile's. White is always a difficult color to work with (at least for me), and I hate to fall back on the "pictures don't do it justice" defense, but in this case the photos do fall a bit short. The shells and pearls are shaded in gray and highlighted with mother of pearl white. It is a rather striking effect in person. I was not too certain about the black dye for the belt but took a chance. I now wish I had gone for blue. Overall I am pretty happy and I think Miriel enjoyed the belt as well.