This costume took me a whopping 150+ hours to complete. The fabrics are all hand-dyed to the correct shade, the bodice is detailed in dragon scale using a North American smocking stitch, which is also present in the shoulder detail, the skirt is hand-pleated (NOT something I would recommend doing - if you need sunburst pleats, pay a professional pleating company to do the work for you. It is completely worth it, and the end result will look nicer), and the straps are detailed using a combination of flexible lock stitch for the embroidery, and gold leafing for the metallic bits. The shoulders alone took me about 30-40 hours to bead - in addition to the beads you can actually see, there are more of the square beads under the fabric to create texture. In the end, the work definitely paid off, because I won Best in Show at Granite Con 2014 with the costume.