Newly Listed: Avogadro Red Creek Jasper Necklace

It's the first Monday of the new year! Yeah!

I've been busting my butt getting pieces together and getting them out on the intarwebs. Online sellers talk a lot about Christmas and Cyber Monday and so on, often saying that it's the busiest time of year for them.

Kokoba has always been a pretty small operation. "Busy" is relative and for me, that means 3 or more sales in a month. Just to give you an idea of how small I am.

What I have noticed is that I have just as many sales in April as I do in December, and more than I have in November. Now, I haven't polled my customers about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if those April sales were graduation gifts, or gifts for favorite teachers. So that means that as soon as the "holiday rush" is over, I need to start ramping up my game for April! Last year I let the store sit in a weird limbo and missed out on a lot. This is not the case, and here is one of the latest pieces created in anticipation of the end-of-school "rush".

Avogadro's number in red creek jasper, by Kokoba

I've forgotten how satisfying it can be to work with just one stone. This and my recent mookaite gravity bracelet both feature only one stone: this time, it's red creek jasper. (The small gold-colored beads are glass.)

The large ovals were a gift from a former coworker, back when I worked at the cave, and to be honest I almost don't want to sell this one. But I think it could make someone really happy, and I used the bulk of those lovely ovals in a Fibonacci necklace that is mine and mine forever. So.

Working with physical constants is tricky because I swear to space they're always changing on me. Rather, physical constants are hard to very measure precisely and accurately. This, coupled with the fact that in the past I would reference Google calculator, Wikipedia, and CODATA's official website willy-nilly means that there is inconsistency across my past work. These days I only use CODATA as a reference, but even then it's updated every couple of years, as scientists adjust their calculations and as our technology becomes more fine-tuned. So fact decay inevitably occurs and one day this necklace will no longer be quite as accurate or as relevant!

(Physical constants are a different beast than irrational numbers. We're incredibly certain about the precise value of numbers like pi or the Golden Ratio to an incredible amount of decimal places.)

I decided to step away from the #sciart hashtag on Twitter this week and see what I could find in Etsy. A lot of great things, it turned out!

Many I recognized from the Mad Scientists of Etsy!:

 Minouette's linocut prints and portraits

ArtAtomic's particle physics prints

which makes sense, since they were the ones who let me know (via Twitter) that #sciart was a thing in the first place. But I also found some really cool new-to-me shops!

Custom DNA Plasmid Art by sandraculliton on Etsy

Sandra Culliton has an amazing variety of watercolor sciart pieces and funky vinyl stickers. DNA plasmids, origami cranes, and jellyfish, oh my!

Jellyfish No. 7, "In the Deep"

I've also admired Ink & Sword's clean retro graphic designs on previous sciart Mondays, but for some reason never made the connection that the pieces were available for purchase on Etsy!

"All That Matters," Ink & Sword

Apollo 11 tribute, Ink & Sword

And finally, Nervous System has some awesome haute couture 3D-printed goodies for your inner Lady Gaga who's also a science nerd:

Silver "Medusa" Necklace, Nervous System

There's a lot more #sciart goodness waiting for you on Etsy, go check it out!