Parade Shield- Part 1

I've made a start on the parade shield for Ex Libris Living History group, and I'm hopeful it will work well. The photocopier enlarged the image mostly well, and it transferred across not too badly. I'm in two minds about a few things, but I have settled on a gold background like we see in so many manuscripts. It's the same as in the original image of the squirrel, so I feel it's keeping in the theme.

I had thought to do matching flowers on the background like I did on the last shield, but I'm also considering grouped dots of three which is a theme we see a bit in medieval art too. Jury still out.