Something tragic happened in the Victorianna. At some point after we moved to San Francisco last fall the bathroom floor I loved so much got totally bleached out. My new workshop didn’t exist yet and the sun must have been shining through the garage window onto the house. I didn’t notice until it was too late.

It’s hard to see how bad it got in photos, but here are the faded tiles with a leftover scrap to give you an idea. I’ve had similar problems with my own attempts at color printing fading, but I’m pretty disappointed that something I paid money for faded so soon.

I could have bought another sheet but didn’t want it to happen again, so I begrudgingly replaced the pretty floor tiles with a plastic sheet of hexagon tiles. At least the tiles in the shower didn’t fade — a very good thing, because I can’t reach those anymore!

I started by removing the baseboards and making a paper template of the floor, getting as close as I could to the areas that aren’t covered by baseboards. I was able to slide the paper under the linen closet and one side of the door trim, which helped.

It took a couple of tries, but here’s what I ended up with. It’ll do. Sigh.

On to the fun stuff. I’ve been hunting around for accessories for the bathroom and wanted to try my hand at making some shampoo and lotion bottles, but couldn’t find the right beads online or in person at Michaels or Beverley’s. (They need to be an appropriate color *and* stand up on their own.) Finally a trip to The Hobby Company which has a whole bead room, yielded these.

Once you find the beads, bottles are super easy to make. Just dab glue on the top…

… then put the glue side face down on a seed bead.

Ta da! Now all it needs is a label (which I haven’t bothered doing yet).

These squat beads made me think of cold cream jars. The top is a metal brad with the legs snipped off.

I also picked out some tiny beads that look like glycerine soap.

I glued some of the soaps onto the smallest of the metal filigrees I bought for the little girl’s mobile a few months back. Here’s one in the Victorianna. The mirror in here is also new – handmade from picture frame trim and a 1″ mosaic mirror.

And here are a couple of the bottles on a floating shelf I added above the toilet.