Many of the camera's today are great for point and shoot photo's. You will 95% of the time get a nice picture. Where it gets a little bit tougher is when you care to manipulate the picture to get better results than what the pre-programmed settings the camera uses to get the "best exposure". Best exposure is a relative term in this case.
Not knowing your camera, or knowledge of the principals of photography, it is hard to get into too many specifics. However, and this a guess based upon the photo's you posted, it seems you do have the ability to modify your apperture. The larger the apperture or F-Stop, the less "field of focus" you have. In other words, F 1.4 gives you less of a range of focus than F22. The end of the pen may be out of focus at F 1.4 but not at F22. The trade-off is that it requires about 7 times more light to take an F22 shot over an F 1.4. Most of that you can make up by increasing your exposure time (use a tripod)
The other tool your camera comes with is the exposure meter. If you have the ability to operate in full manual mode then let the meter tell you what it thinks you need, exposure 1/125 at F22 for example, and then go ahead and take 3 pictures at F22. The first at 1/60th, 1/125, and the last at 1/250th. This is called bracketing and uses the built in meter for a best guess and gives you a hedge on either side.
One last thing you may try is to experiment with different background materials. Shop towels are the most convenient things around, and I am more than guilty of using my share of them, but they do present problems. Something I started more recently was going to BORG or Lowes to get a couple feet of wallpaper samples here and there. You can find very neutral colors and muted patterns that will not cause your exposure meter to be fooled or the viewer's eyes to be distracted from you showpiece.
At one point I studied to be a professional artistic photographer and have used suede, leather, mirrors, concrete, water, dirt, wood, plastic sheeting, and bubble pack amongst many others are all items I have used as backgrounds. Simple advice is to play at it lots and keep track of what works. One good site that deals with close-up digital photography can be found at
Jewelry photography tips - how to photograph jewelry
BTW, very nice work you have done.
Second, I see you have a problem that I am battling. The problem, as evident in frame 1 & 3, is that the macro setting has such a small depth of field. So, the back part of the picture is not crisp...no idea what you should do....just pointing it out in hopes that someone can thow out idears!
