Jewellery photoshooting (myself being model)

I decide to take some pictures of my jewelry works (see my store). As I want to show how my jewelry look like on a person so I become my own model & take photos by myself. This is how I did it:

What is need:
a camera (I have a Lumix Panasonic DMC-TS3) ,
a tripod, 
good lights (sunny day under nature light),
good background. In my backyard, my morning glory is blooming beautifully in the morning & it climbs the fence so that I have a perfect green nature background. 
One more thing: I prefer wearing black for most jewelry photo shooting.

I set up the tripod, put a mirror in the back of the camera so that I can see what will be taken (remember that I take photo of myself). I set the camera to wait for 2 second to take pictures. This is to avoid shaking or moving the camera while pressing the button. It also gives me time to pose and keep still.

This the first one. As you can see the light is not even on my face cause the light comes from the back of my left side. You can hardly see the real color of the jewelry. (see this necklace and matching earrings)

I moved the tripod around to test it out and adjust the exposure settings. I got this one. It seems it is exposed too much (see this choker)

I changed the exposure settings and this seems a better one so far. (see this statement necklace)

There are definitely room for improvement. And there is always gimp to edit the pictures.

Do you have more experience of photo shooting? Please share with  me your experience and tips.