Sea Glass Tree of Life Mosaic-Update

"Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him." ~Revelation 22:2

Doesn't it look pretty with the light shining through?
When we are finished, the entire window will be covered with glass.

Last June my friend, Christi, and I began to plan out a sea glass mosaic project depicting the Tree of Life from the book of Revelation and I shared our beginnings here.  We recently spent six hours on a lovely late-summer day to seriously begin the work.  Since our first session in June, I diligently worked at sorting the many  jars of assorted colors of sea glass that I had accumulated over the last seven years.  I purchased an old window from our local rehab store thinking about how gorgeous the mosaic would look hanging in a window, and then I waited patiently until Christi and I could find a date that would work for  the two of us to gather at my kitchen table and begin the painstaking process of gluing the sea glass shards to the window glass.

When Christi arrived at my house, the first thing we did was to give my recycled window a critical look and decided that it was too shabby, too large, and in too much disrepair to use for our project.  So off we went to another store that sold windows that had known a former purpose.  The very first window we noticed when we walked into the store turned out to be the most perfect window for our project and we purchased it with some of the funds that I earned selling my poetry notecards at the Kansas City National Religious Art Show last July.  (For more on that story, visit this link.)

With the perfect window in hand, Christi offered a quick prayer offering our work for the glory of God and we began spreading the glass out on the table, and, using E6000 glue, set to work meticulously gluing brown glass for the tree trunk, and blue and white pieces for the river, onto the glass.

My collection of sea glass marbles is extremely small with only 12 pieces in all, and I had hoped to keep them in little plastic containers on my front porch window as a treasured prize forever, but Christi convinced me that the marbles would be put to better use as the seasonal fruits on the tree where they would really stand out.  Of course she was right. Her artistic eye instinctively knows what will look best.  Slowly, I am learning the spiritual discipline of detachment.

And so we carried on most pleasantly gluing the sea glass marbles and shards to the window when all too soon it was time for my children to arrive home from school and for Christi and I to clean up the project pieces and set them away for another day.  But this time we don't want to wait months before setting about the task once again and we set a date for the following week.  I can hardly wait to see how this will turn out when we are through and am anticipating a life-time of pleasure and prayer as I look at, and through, the glass recalling the bounty and goodness of God.

So much glass to choose from!
Can you pick out the subtle differences in shades of green and the faint difference between lavender and white?

A work in progress!

Setting the spring flowers in place using tiny mussel shells for the leaves and blue sea glass for forget-me-nots.

You can see that Christi had drawn a rough outline on the glass with blue marker.
We decided that it would have been better to have drawn it on the bottom of the glass so we could wash it off.  Can you see it through the blue water on the sides?

The large glass pieces along the bottom sides represent the 12 houses of Israel.