Hi everyone! I am closing my etsy shop in 5 days – Thursday December 3rd – for three months while I travel. I have just put my latest goodies up for Christmas shoppers – a lot of antique-looking jewelry and some original artwork that I created for Shriners Hospitals for Children. This is the first time I have posted original artwork and remember these items will only be listed for five days, then I’m on the road. Take a look and please share with your friends! :D
Come visit my online etsy shop with around 122 different items for sale at www.glooart.etsy.com
I have a lot of antique brass and copper jewelry that I am in love with. IN LOVE I TELL YOU!! Lots of high quality crystal and gemstones, particularly amethyst. I am so infatuated with amethyst at the moment (yummo!) SHOP HERE.
And some original artworks I created for Shriners Hospital for Children. This is the first time I have listed original art for sale. Remember these items will only be listed for five days, then I’m on the road. SHOP HERE.
Original handmade jewelry and artwork made by me :D Please share this with your friends!!
SHOP HERE.
SHOP HERE for funky original jewelry made by me and a small selection of original mixed media artwork.
Remember these items will only be listed for five days, then I’m on the road. I love you guys. Thank you so much for supporting me and my children xoxox
Love Jaz
xox
JASMINE’S GLOOART ETSY SHOP IS HERE
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS!!! Thank you so much!!
Posted: November 29th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
Tags: amethyst jewelry, antique brass and copper jewelry, artwork, glooart etsy shop, mixed media original artwork
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Recently, a beautiful French woman by the name of Pati (you’ve got to check out her amazing blog) approached me with a desire to help our financial situation due to high cost of healthcare in America. Having two children with Muscular Dystrophy means they need to access that healthcare system on a daily basis. She wanted to offer her artistic talents to help raise funds for our frighteningly large medical bills. Her offer literally brought tears to my eyes – she completely blew me away. I was so touched by her kindness and generosity. Since I have spend a good part of the last twelve+ months finding ways to take care of these huge bills in a way that wouldn’t involve bankruptsy, I felt that we were actually in an ok place right now regarding those bills (sortof) and that the place where additional funding could most benefit our children at this point was The Muscular Dystrophy Association of Western Australia. The NeuroSciences lab there is at the forefront of cutting edge research in muscular dystrophy. Even though the clinical trials happening there right now are for the more common Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy, I believe the science behind the trials (exon skipping) the most likely to have an impact on our children at some point down the road.
Look how amazing she is! Pati put together two digital scrap kits: The Love Kit and Merry Christmas Kit just for us. She is amazing. You can download these for free with the hope that you may give a donation – large or small – to the Muscular Dystrophy Association of WA in return. Many thanks to Pati and many thanks to you for supporting a cause so precious to me.
xox
Donate to The MDA Today!
Download Free Digital Scrapart Today!
(These took me about 15 minutes each to whip up from some of Pati’s designs – thanks Pati!!)
(And look what pretties Pati made!)
Posted: November 5th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
Tags: free digital scrapbooking kits, fundraising, MDA, MDAWA, muscular dystrophy association of western australia, onirie, patis scrapbook
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mmMMMmmm I’m so lucky. I am a guest artist on Emilies ‘Life is Beautiful’ Blog this week. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE her blog and so does everyone who visits. She is a magic mumma and so inspiring to me creatively. Emily has just had another bub (a gorgeous ten pounder who I can’t wait to photograph when I go home for Christmas) and has a few guest artists filling in for her 52Q Challenge while she gets settled. This is a creative weekly challenge and in many ways, it is also a spiritual challenge – you should join in and post your link! We would love to see your beautiful creative expressions :)
This weeks question is:
What brings me joy?
There are a handful of things that bring me true and deep joy in my life, and I treasure those things and hold them very close to me.
I know Emily from back when we were in our late teens. We rocked the stage together in Arsenic and Old Lace and some other fun things happening in Perth at the time. And guess what? I just found the pictures!! Go on, have a snort and a giggle and a smile – I sure did!! I still laugh so hard looking at these memories, even twelve years later. I LOVE Emily’s bright red gorgeous lips (she is one of the only people I know that can do red like that! So saucy!) and the tea towels padding my bum! And the thing that makes me laugh the hardest, even now, is remembering how we had to try so hard not to laugh on stage when Aaron started to have an impromptu evil fit. Notice Leia and I hiding behind our hankies? It was such a great show. (I am laughing out loud so bad right now just thinking about it - these memories are bringing me joy for sure. There is nothing quite like a good belly laugh over a great memory :)
Fun times. Funny memories. (REALLY funny memories!)
xox
Posted: September 27th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
Tags: arsenic and old lace, Emily Falconbridge, leia corrie
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Keep an eye on this spot! Our Etsy shop is coming soon! It will be filled with beautiful designer fabric and vintage fabric skirts, made with love by brookie; gorgeous one-of-a-kind jewelry for every age, made by me (including a sterling silver collection) and yummy texturous original art and archival prints made by my 7 year old son and me. Here is just a taste of what yumminess is to come!
Watch this space!! Our Etsy shop is coming soon and we can’t wait to share our hand-made-with-love goodies with you!
Love Jaz
xox
Posted: June 12th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
Tags: brooke shipley, Jasmine Bailey-Barfuss
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“The man who fights too long against dragons, becomes a dragon himself…”
It is not the act of lying that is upsetting – it is the sad fact that believing this person in the future is so infinitely more difficult. The truth may hurt for a little while, but lies hurt for so much longer. How do you grow to trust a person that has lied or is currently lying? And does the trust ever truly grow back?
Yes, I think so. Afterall, to trust is a choice and we have power over our choices.
Nevertheless, may I always tell the truth, even when it hurts. And may I love the liar, difficult as that may be at first.
Jasmine
Posted: March 8th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
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52Q -Question 9
What was the last brave thing I did?
- A Mini Art Journal Weekly Challenge
I love this project! I found this challenge on my girlfriend Emily’s blog
What a fabulous blog and what a beautiful collection of people who follow Emily’s lovely life and are inspired by her positive creativity. Dozens of people do these art projects and gain a lot of positivity by it. Emily is asking a different question each week for the entire year – hence it being called the 52Q Challenge.
If you would like to join in on the fun too and do your own, remember to share
Here is the last brave thing I personally did and my artwork expressing it:
The last brave thing I did was carry my daughters non-responsive body into the emergency room, knowing she was in respiratory failure, not knowing how we would pay the intensive care bill, but knowing that she needed more help than I could give…
I am a lot braver now than I was when my son almost died from RSV. With the amount of Intensive Care visits and close calls my children have had with their muscular dystrophy over the last 7 years, I know more and knowing more helps with the fear. But still, walking in to that emergency room, my knees felt weak and my eyes stung with the tears of fear I struggled to keep from spilling over – if I let one drop onto my cheek, then all composure would be lost and all strength would have melted into a pool of uselessness. I had to be brave. I needed to speak with the doctors and staff. I needed to teach them about this rare muscular dystrophy and what it does to my children and what they needed to do to help her. I needed to hold it together, for just a bit longer.
I had to be brave.
And yet, my children are infinitely so much braver than I…
Phoenix and Isis constantly amaze me with their bravery. My life is so much better and deeper because of their presence in it.
Jasmine
xxx
Posted: March 4th, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
Tags: Emily Falconbridge, Rigid Spine Muscular Dystrophy
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“Life is pain princess.” Sweet Wesley explains, disguised as The Dread Pirate Roberts. The princess has not guessed that he is really her true love. All she sees is the wicked villain who murdered her childhood love, her Sweet Wesley.
She had thought Wesley was dead for many years. Since that life-altering moment years ago – the moment she was told her true love was gone forever – her life had surely been pain. One monotonous day after the other of just existing, never truly living. Even marrying the Prince and promoting from being a poor farmer to a wealthy aristocrat, did not erase the pain of losing a true, deep, and most sweet love. The love of her life, so to speak.
Real love is funny like that – once felt in a life, that life is never the same.
Pain is also funny like that – once felt in a life, that life is never the same.
Even with untold riches now at her disposal and a handsome prince by her side – the things most woman dream of in life (just watch any Disney movie) – the Princess could not ease or erase the pain that was her life after losing Wesley.
Wealth can give us the means to momentarily escape the pain, but pain has this funny way of following us everywhere we go – have you noticed? And just when we think it is gone – that we have finally escaped it – it shows it’s face, unwanted, unwelcome. A horrible visitor, that does not know when to leave. And so we pretend the visitor is gone, but he keeps leaving the toilet seat up, and so we are reminded of his lingering presence.
Pondering life after 31 years of it, sitting hear by Phoenix’s bed in hospital, thinking of loved ones… and how much I look like my brother Glenn in this picture
Wealth can give us a tropical holiday to escape the pain; fun gadgets and toys to distract from the pain; medicine – legal and illegal – to take the body away from the pain; But is pain really something to be afraid of, to fear, to run away from? Do we skirt around the edges of it when we see it, run in the opposite direction completely, close our eyes to it, sweep it under the carpet with all the other dust of life or charge right through it – head first – and take it on as the life-changing foe it is?
Us humans inherently do not like emotional pain because it hurts. It is uncomfortable physically. It twists our stomachs – it takes over our physical bodies and it doesn’t feel good at all while it lasts.
I remember having a shower several hours after dad died in our living room while sitting in his armchair. I remember standing under the boiling stream of water and being almost completely overrun by a pain that is quite literally indescribable. If my body’s auto-pilot hadn’t kicked in on a subconscious level, I would have been a vomiting, limp mass on the tiled floor, incapable of speech, of recognising my name, of knowing how to wash my hair, of remembering that I had a son with special needs who needed me.
How does one draw focus while in that kind of pain? I do not know. And yet, somehow, I showered, got clean and dressed that day when dad died. I got up the following morning and took my son to his hospital appointment – he was having 3-4 days at the hospital each week back then. Life was hard and very exhausting without the death of my father – my strength, my beacon, my guidance counsellor – on top of having a beautiful boy with a mysterious disease. And yet I was able to wake up and get dressed that morning after dad died, I was able to speak to the doctor, I was able to feed my son, I was able to drive the car. Somehow. I felt like I was outside my body the entire time, but I did what I needed to do.
It is amazing what us humans are capable of in life, when we do not give ourselves the option to fail or run away. There is an untapped strength within each of us. It is part of being human – we all have it. Most of the time, we do not realise it is there, because we do not usually have to access it.
I have people tell me all the time that I am a strong one and was chosen to have two children with Rigid Spine Muscular Dystrophy for a reason.
So not true. I have a self-destruct button just like everyone else.
My children have a genetic mutation that both my husband and I passed on to them. I cursed my genes almost every day for two years.
But really, it is just crazy, random luck.
If it were true that all disabled children were born to strong parents who could ‘handle’ the emotional pain of it all – parents who were “stronger” than others – then there would not be so many disabled children abandoned at birth.
I simply chose to love. I chose to fight. I chose to do whatever it is that is needed to take care of these beautiful, precious, amazing humans that are half me. I cry – a lot. My stomach twists into a ball of grief, sorrow and worry – a lot. I feel sorry for myself – a lot. I feel sorry for my children – a lot. I melt-down – a lot. Then I pick myself up again and continue the fight for my children’s lives and happiness.
I get up out of bed every morning, because I have to. I feel the pain, because I have to. I cannot go and escape into oblivion with alcohol or drugs – even though there are times when I wish so desperately that I could – because my children need me at my best. They need me alert, awake, and on top of my game. They need me physically and emotionally present at all hours of the day and night.
My dad always taught me that with pain comes the largest joy of our life’s experience. Without tasting the bitter, the sweet is far less sweet and often unrecognisable. Pain intensifies the joy, when that joy comes along. The pain of seeing my children suffer and struggle to stay alive and be with me, has made their smiles and their hugs and the cute quirky things they say, so much sweeter; so much more valued; my love for them is so much deeper than it would otherwise be because I allow myself to feel and process the pain as it comes along in life.
Pain intensifies joy, when that joy comes along…
Pain helps me to love more deeply, appreciate more fully and care more sincerely.
I am not strong. I have no deep spiritual-base to draw strength from. Since illness has become a part of our lives, I have wondered if god even exists and still do not have the answer to that troubling question. All the faith that once gave me strength as a naive young adult, has shattered completely.
Now I am thirty-one and not so naive. I just do what I have to do. I swim through the pain and allow it to embrace me. I allow myself to feel it, to cry and at times I wish I was dead, just so I wouldn’t feel it anymore.
But then the sun breaks through. I get a clearer view. I feel my strength renew… (words to one of my favourite songs.) It always does. If you tackle the pain head-on with fists-a-fighting, you will eventually break through it and the sun will shine again – and it will feel much sweeter and warmer than the sun ever did, before the pain helped you to grow into a new person.
Feel the pain, even though instinctually you want to run from it. Embrace it. Know that you will be a fuller, wiser, more real person by the end of it.
Life is all about growth. If I stop growing and are just grinding away at life with no movement, I know it is because I have let my fears and sorrows beat me.
Jasmine
xxx
Posted: February 22nd, 2009 |
Author: jasmine |
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