I agree with 'reallynicestamps' -- depending on the actual value of your items and your cost of procurement, providing free international shipping is just too costly for most sellers.
Now, if you're planning to sell high-quality costume jewellery or jewellery with precious/semi-precious settings that will be selling for hundreds of dollars a piece, and your margins are fairly high, you may be able to be successful with free shipping internationally if your sales volumes justify it. You will need to used a tracked service though (Tracked Packet or higher), and signature confirmation for the most pricey stuff, all of which will be expensive, even if the item is very small.
Frankly, depending on your products, I think you'll find that most of your buyers will be in the U.S. and Canada anyway. Why not stick with those two destinations? The shipping options to the U.S. are far better and far less expensive than to overseas destinations, which allows many of us to avoid using tracking to the U.S. (unless the items are valuable). The expense and trouble of international shipping (not to mention the problems with eBay's on-time delivery policies) may not be worth it if all you end up with is a lot of defects.
Here's the bottom line of the math in international selling: the cheapest shipping service (Light Packet Int'l) for up to 200gms (including packaging) is $8.78 (Cdn). Assuming you're selling relatively inexpensive items, you will therefore be losing close to $9.00 on every international sale. As 'reallynicestamps' points out, either you have to offset that loss elsewhere by shifting prices on your U.S. or Canadian sales, or sell every item internationally at a price that will guarantee you get enough of a profit after covering your cost of acquiring the item, and also your related expenses (packing and shipping supplies, etc.).
As for "safe" international destinations, although there are some to avoid like the plague, it depends also partly on which international shipping service you use. If you're shipping always with tracking, you can probably afford to take more of a risk with the lesser-known destinations.
If you're using Light/Small Packet, it's probably best to stick to destinations with reliable postal systems and stable economies and governments, where loss and theft is less likely. Nonetheless, for some reason even places like Germany and Italy have had reported issues, and a number of sellers say they won't ship to either. Start perhaps with the U.K., western Europe and Japan, and see how it goes before branching out to Timbuktu.
