This is our guest bedroom after the make-over. This room was originally Josh's room. When he was about 14 or so, he had me paint the walls dark teal with metallic silver trim and ceiling. I got berber carpet in a turquoise/gray/off white tweed. Needless to say, the wear & tear a teenager (and when he came back home to live a couple of times), had this room looking bad. It looked more like a cave than a room. We finally got around to redoing this room after talking about it for several years. We had painters come in and remove the popcorn ceiling (it was the rage when we had this house built in the middle 80s) and paint the walls and texture the ceilings. We removed the nasty carpet and Bennie laid tile. New roman wooden blinds, bedspread and throw rug complete the makeover. I even covered all the switchplates and outlets to match.

The new bedspread has cafe au lait and aqua stripes. I added a throw rug in beige beside the bed. The huge stereo speakers Josh left behind are great for bedside tables.


Notice the floor - Bennie laid the tile. Sofa table with TV. Pyramid box from Tricia for my birthday. It opens and holds an art doll.

The dresser holds the turquoise art doll Lisa made for my birthday and the dolls with a secret art doll and book from our second art doll round robin.








I covered the old lightswitch plates with polymer clay. I learned the technique at clay carnival from Kim Cavender.




Outlet plate covered with polymer clay.









Now the room looks inviting, fresh, updated and ready for company.

I saw the idea for doing a floor with paper bags on one of the do-it-yourself email newsletters that I receive. My husband has never been happy with the floor that I redid years ago in our hall bathroom so I decided to recycle all the paper grocery bags that I had onto my floor.

I tore lots of bags and used them with the printed side down. I diluted plain white glue with water to apply the pieces directly to the cleaned floor, making sure to cover the whole floor, overlapping the pieces as I lay them on the floor. Once the floor was completely dried, I antiqued it with antique glaze, wood stain, diluted acrylic paints and dry brushed metallic colors randomly. So far, so good - it looked great and everyone who saw it was impressed and had no clue that it was paper bags.

When I applied the polyurethane I thought disaster had struck! The paper bubbled. I was horrified. After applying a couple more coats, I used a razerblade to slit the worst of the bubbles and applied more glue. More polyurethane was applied. I needed to patch a couple of places and while speed drying the area with a heat gun, I made a discovery - the area where I heated laid down flat. I tried it on some of the other raised areas and they laid down as well. I used the heat gun and did more of the bubbles. The painters were coming to paint the back bedroom so I had to let the floor cure before they came (the polyurethane takes 3 days to cure to walk on it with shoes & I didn't think it would be right to ask them to remove their shoes). After the painters completed the job, I went back to finish the bathroom. I cleaned the floor and decided I would add some embossing powders for more interest (using the heat gun had given me the idea) I used some wet polyurethane to get the powders to stick into place and then melted them with the heat gun. Three more coats of polyurethane and my floor was finished. The only expense I had was the $29.99 gallon of polyurethane. You'd never guess the floor began as Tom Thumb grocery sacks!

I participated in a beaded doll swap earlier this year. This was the doll I created for my partner. I choose the fabric from my stash, a gorgeous piece with autumn colors. I've been wanting to bead it, so I sewed a "goddess" style doll and beaded her when I was attending the Texas Beaders Retreat. The face is hand molded polymer clay.

I've always been fastinated by faces, especially ones with character. No faces seem to have more character than the American Indian. Throughout the years I've done various famous Indians in different mediums. The first one was permanent pen on fabric. My favorite is the one I painted on a wooden box for my husband - I entered that one in the State Fair of Texas and got best of show. The other one is painted on a jacket that I did before a painting convention.

Snow! Yes, it snowed in Texas this year though not until March 5th. These were the largest flakes and the heaviest snow I've seen in over five years. This is the view from my back door. It had only been snowing about 30 minutes at this point. It continued to snow for another 2 - 3 hours. Of course, this being Texas, it was gone by the following afternoon except for the north side of the houses and any snowmen that were built. I think it was around 70 two days later. Got to love our weather.