How Not to Make a Waterfall Album

In my constant state of reorganizing and purging, I came across some long lost chipboard waterfall style albums of various subjects.  I decided to start with the Baby book since it was the smallest one and chose to do a boy themed book since I have paper pads that will work.

As I was choosing papers, I was careful to pick papers for facing pages that would be complimentary even if it didn't exactly match.  My intention was to use all the papers throughout the album for continuity so I was more concerned with the patterns working together than the colors.  

So here are my choices after painstakingly cutting out each page.

Nice and simple for the cover.

The grid pattern is simple so works well with the plaid

This is a little riskier but the various shapes looks ok. 

This is the only orange page but the plan was to use this color through the album for accents and embellishments.

Luckily, I put all the papers in place before I glued them down because this is what it looked like from the front:

Horrific! I think the cover is too light and the plaid next to the stripe is a terrible combination. I can't just switch the pages around so I have to start over.  In doing this, I remembered why I never covered them in the first place. 

Does anyone have any tips for covering chipboard? Any mistakes you learned from that you care to share?