"The only thing exposed was her face and she was immobile for months," Carolyn Martin said. "She was only 2½ and we knew we had to think of an appropriate way we could take the pain out of her body."

Ms Martin and her husband, Ron Delezio, worked on a diversion technique in which they blew imaginary bubbles that represented the pain.

"We started doing a bit of yoga breathing and we decided we would make our own bubbles and decorate them, blow them out the window, send them to the moon," Ms Martin said.

Sophie lost her right ear, left foot, right leg, the fingers on her right hand and much of her hair to the shocking burns she suffered when a car crashed into her day-care centre in Fairlight in 2003. She was injured again in 2006 when she was hit by a car near her home in Seaforth.

"We still use the bubbles when she's in pain and now she will automatically do it herself," Ms Martin said.

Taking time out from a frolic in the leaves in the front garden with her brother, Mitchell, Sophie said that she had recently devised a new method: "Now I stitch them in the morning."

Those imaginary bubbles are the subject of an artwork she has done for an exhibition organised by the Pain Management Research Institute. Sophie is among 24 artists who have donated a work on glass for Windows On Pain, encapsulating their experiences of pain to raise awareness of the devastating impact of chronic pain. The institute estimates one in five Australians suffers from severe pain, costing the economy $34.5 billion a year.

The works will be displayed in the foyer of the ABN AMRO Tower in Phillip Street, Sydney, from May 23 to June 6 before they are auctioned at a dinner on June 11. All money raised will go to pain research.