The top brooch used transparent enamel over the steel, thus the cloudiness of the finish on some pieces. The bottom piece was an irregular coat (of a newly acquired enamel – I’m still fine tuning its consistency), thus the blackened metal coming through on some of the pieces.
These are tough little guys to enamel, owing to the tiny size of the inserts; they’re about 5mm in diameter. I now wear a silk cord tied with two leftovers from the top work. In each of these ‘spares’, one of the two 0.5mm holes was completely sealed by enamel, rendering them useless for the brooch. Lucky I have a few spares around the place, as I have to always enamel more than I need, to insure against the inevitable failures.