Antiquing- and not the shopping kind

So, it feels like I'm admitting to cheating- but I do age pieces.  If I only used pieces that were already old looking- I'd be poor and have much fewer options.  So, yeah, not everything I make is out of things magically found in the gutter, OK?  Can you forgive me already?  Like, recently, I became semi-obsessed with antique strawberry pincushions.  Like so:

From here.  Everything I could find was either very expensive (if they were real antiques), or too huge for jewelry (the one above would occupy my entire cupped hand), or not velvet, or attached to a giant tomato.  So I got these cuties:

From here.  And used sharpies, wax and mud to turn them into this:

They're still wet and linty from a paper towel, but that's pretty good, huh?  Maybe too dirty? We'll see when they dry.  I can soap them off a bit.  My secret is this giant tub of wax medium stuff that I bought when I thought I'd become an encaustics artist.  Found a new use!  Use it on almost all my fabrics.  It has the consistency of coconut oil in the container before it totally melts in your hand.... sort of. But they do look older, hu?  And dirtier...  They're about an inch tall... on a necklace or one off a bracelet?  I had been thinking earrings, but now I don't know...

P.S.  Now I keep finding more:

From a blog actually called velvet strawberries!

from here.

from here.

Here's the primitive version:

(Is it the potato or the mauve cone?)

Then on etsy:

 here.here.

here.here.