I do a bit of both - I belong to a kit club (Scrapbook Generations) and with my subscription get enough material for 5 double page layouts. They use very few actual embellishments, the embellishments are usually derived from patterns in the patterned paper. I do adapt my pictures to the layouts, and move things around or substitute different pictures sizes to accomplish what I want to scrap (even using the B side of the paper). For example, last night I wanted to scrapbook something that made me happy because I had just gotten some bad news (that turned out not to be anything, but that came later). I went to my photos and found the ones I took at the Josh Groban concert last summer. I flipped through my page kits to see if there was one I could use, and found one with the title "For the Record". I used the concert photos on that and talked about the CD the tour was based on in my journaling. For the most part, my pages are very plain, but when I am working on my own (and not from a kit or swap item) I sometimes do challenge myself to make a "fancier" page, which usually ends up being the first page(s) of a longer layout or the title page for a trip. But I am usually just so excited to get the pictures and journaling on a page, I don't spend a lot of time.