Xandi.. kind of unsure on your question.  What I've been doing for relaxation lately is creating textures for some of my fave clothes.  Some have come off quite well.. others have been horrid and never saw daylight past a couple hours in the oven.

 

As far as the whole displacement conversation goes, I've been schooling myself for the last few months on the topic of normal maps.  With the use of nrm maps and inverted nrm maps you can gain a lot of mileage for adding depth to a lot of things.  In fact, if you go through my gallery here, EVERY texture I have made for someone else's product has used NRM maps instead of bump.  By adjusting intensity and by tweaking the 3 details you can achieve some pretty nice texture.  Dsp maps are another thing that I avoid on all but the rare texture here and there.  I've done rock, wood grain, fabric sand, dirt and grass with a lot more realism using nrm maps alone rather than adding a dsp map.

 

As far as spec maps go.. I love them.  I love to be able to fine tune the amount of shine/gloss in things.  I'm still learning how to manipulate them as well as I've seen some ppl do; but, I feel like I'm coming along quite well.