I don't know where to begin, you've left SO much to be done.
There's basically no shading, what you have is far too invisible.
There's no AAing
There's no 3d shape to it
I don't even know if you're supposed to put it on with your arm vertically through it or horizontally

maybe put some more effort into this and then come back?

okay if you really have no clue then start with the FORM of the piece.

I want you to draw lineart, no colours, of a bracer. Make it 3-d, make it see-thru so we can see the lines "behind" and such. Once you've got that you can start on lightsource use and shading and then decorating.

any ONE colour on any OTHER colour.
just don't shade or colour it in

Why dont you come back and post something that you actually put some effort into.

Well, maybe a redefinition of effort is in order. Something you make, or can remake, in under five minutes is not often considered good. Well, hardly ever. So the goal is to put in things that take pointlessly large amounts of time. Take dithering, for example. Instead of creating a few shades progressively (and significantly - your peice needs more contrast) darker than the base and using that as shade, some people prefer to make only two or three shades and put them tiny little dots in by hand, verry verry slowly. It makes it look.. well, more like pixel art (in my opinion).

Another thing is pallette selection. The real good pixel artists (I think) love to go into colour theory when picking their palettes. Of course, on a pixelled item, mood doesn't matter, so all you'd focus on is what colours blend well together.

Time-user number three. Line art. This is really where it makes a lot of sense to use a lot of time. Make sure you've got the peice looking exactly as you want it to look before you start colouring. And as you're doing the line art, keep in mind where you're gonna want your shadows to show up, and where your lightsource is, etc. Plan the peice in your head as you're adding and editing your lines.

And number four. Do everything in steps. Instead of just colouring as it would end up being coloured, pixellists love to add the "base colour" onto every item or object in their lineart. This means you can easily change colours if need be, and you can again plan for texture, lighting, shadows, all that stuff that gives the illusion of reality.

There you go. A basic checklist (kinda, and in no particular order) of what a pixel peice should have. Ok, not a checklist at all, but a something.

Alright, your peice needs

A) more contrast between the shades of yellow

B) selective outlining around the edges

C) anti-aliasing around the edges

D) stricter geometry. Why did you put it on a tilt anyways? keep the bottom as a relatively straight line, and make your gems more symmetrical.

Oh, one more thing, your sig is kinda annoying. Mostly because its sedge's art. and not really all that nice to look at, I'm sorry to say (not sedge's art, the animation itself ;P)

"I may as well squeeze a diamond out of a lump of coal."

You could try that. It'd probably be more productive than most of your posts.

Once again, may I point out that this thread must stay on track? I will not lock it but I will delete posts if need be.

Also, spymp3, please don't enlarge your emoticons... it is very supadude of you and it sucks donkey balls.

Also, I agree with taking more time than a few minutes with your images. It is easily shown that one didn't put much time at all. Even the simplest of objects such as a "bandit leader brace" must have some fine detail. It is difficult for anybody to give you guidance on how to "fix" something without some amount of details to suggest to fix. If I were to draw a circle, colour it yellow, and said it was a moon, it wouldn't be much of a moon would it? It could easily be a frisbee or something else altogether. Try placing some details that would make it easily defined as a bandit leader brace... right now it looks like a piece of cheese with pimentos stuck in it