Frugal use of paper for father and daughter layout

The finished layout

I have just created another page for mum's album showing two photos of her and her dad. I am finding it quite hard to scrap these old photos as the colours are so sepia. I found two pieces of coloured card stock from Imagination Project (Chloe's closet range) that I thought would work... but did not have a full sheet of either - a result of my desire to make my own embellishments by cutting flowers etc from a page. I have used the pieces I had to make my own background mounted on a thin recycled rough style paper. I then added distressed orangey red mounts and sewed on buttons, added strips of ribbon and stamped and inked a title and made a flower embellishment with added glossy accents from the paper. I also doodled stitches around the flowers but that does not really show up.

Layered flower embellishment with ink, button and glossy accents

The flowers were placed so that the pattern would look more complete when photos and other strip was added.

 Not my favourite layout - I need to find a way to scrap these sepia style photos as there are many more. Perhaps monochrome is the way to go. The other problem is that I am just trying to use what is in my stash as once I've bought the album, inserts and contributed my share for the party there is not a lot left in the kitty.