Yes it's a ruby. It's not your monitor, it's not as bright as the diamond. However it's my intention : the edges of this jewel are so smooth in real life the light don't shine on it.
well, i like them :)
i think that the ruby (its a ruby, right?) is lacking the same clear-cut definition as the diamond though. but that could just be my monitor, it has a tendency to blow out reds.
onek your edit is worse. As for the aesthetic part, I'm sure he meant that there's no single way to create an aesthetic piece in any category of art, as you were making it out to have one unique aesthetic choice which being a minimum palette. Not that every category of art is the same which I'm not sure how you got.
adarias:
"... your edit looks much worse..." 
.... yeah right......
"no single aesthetic of a special medium..." .... what about sculpture, photographie, painting, drawing, edging... even music or dancing. ..etc.... all the same to you ?
Thanks a lot Adarias but Onek is right in the way I could have used less colors (and for the interesting difficulty it might be ^^). But the forum where the icons was asked was not really a Pixel-Art forum (not at all in fact), and I thought that : "Why limit myself to a few colors ?".
But your edit looks much worse than the original (particularly the cup crystal) and was harder to make and will be harder to edit.
I will agree that in some cases the medium is the greatest assets at play in pixel art, but this is more rarely than might be thought, and when restrictions are imposed just for their own sake, without contributing anything to the product, it's far more wasteful than anything else.
There is nothing special about any medium, nor is there ever a single aesthetic. What makes any art special is the hands, eyes, and mind of the artist and the world he lives in, not some (arbitrary) color count imposed upon an otherwise attractive piece.
yeah colors are definitly used well, im not saying anything else.... but some differences arent noticable at all... its like gold-plateing a bar of gold, ...just wasteful.....
EDIT with 24 colors....
its just my taste... for me, palettes and such are pretty much essential for pixel art... pixel art is about restricting yourself.... working in a set grid, following machine restrictions etc....,thats creates a unique aesthetic, thats what so special about it,... you shouldnt excessivly splash data all over the screen, but work with only a few and try to get the best out of it... its like some sort of asceticism in art
onek - i think that's a long shot too far, these could be done with 16 but why? maybe a few could be cut here and there but the colors as they are are used quite well.
nice icons, but 44 colors is a lot, maybe try to find a global, lets say, 16 color palette for them
Oui le site de Pixel joint à changé de design depuis quelques années déjà. Mais à l'époque c'était bien. Je les ai fait pour le site jvc.com dans le profil des joueurs. Le pire c'est qu'ils y sont toujours.