Embellishments to Paper Ratio and Paper Ribbon

So my mom bought me some bath 3D stickers to use for scrapbooking my son.  I finally had picture of him in a bath that I wanted to use in a layout.  I bought the Me and My Big Idea Baby Boy stack when I found out I was having a boy because I was going to pre-make layouts to slap picture on later because I knew I would be too tired from nursing and taking care of a new life to scrapbook, but I knew I wanted him to have a baby album made by me.  I will do a blog on that some other time.  Back to the embellishments my mom bought.  She is not a crafter so she picks up things not really knowing how I will use them.  Have you had people buy you craft supplies without seeing if it is something you will really use?  That can be kind of frustrating because it may not be your style.  Anyway, I liked the stickers, but I have really been into buying coordinating things.  Like the stickers, cards, and paper are all the same line from the same company.  I usually get a few layout and a couple of cards out of that.  So I have the baby boy paper and I have 3 pictures.  I cut the photos down to 4 X 4 inches for my layout.  I have been loving that size.  I find with 4 x 6's you get a lot of background of the photo that is not important to the photo.  Also you lose quite a bit of space on your page that you could be seeing more of the paper patterns or embellishments. So for this layout I used 3 patterned papers.  The strip paper is .5 inches wide and cut into 8 inches and 4 inches.  The oh boy paper is 1 inch wide and cut into 5.5 and 6.5 inches.  The polka dots are also one inch and 6 inches each but I shortened them when I cut them into ribbons.  Which I show how I do that below.  This layout was complete very quickly since I didn't use much paper and required no punches.  Just stickers and 3 strips of paper.  Very good for a simple and low on supplies layout.