Scrapbooking | 2020 Asymmetry

Along with the monthly "by the numbers" layouts I'm creating this year, I'll be using a combination of traditional, hybrid and digital pages in our 2020 chronological scrapbook. Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life 2.0 workshop (which I did not complete back in the summer of 2017 and is still available as a self-paced workshop) provides instructions for all these types of layouts, so I decided to review those materials for inspiration as I scrap these first few months of the year.

I used the asymmetrical layout assignment as the basis for a layout documenting Robbie's trip to India in mid-January (before the initial reports of the coronavirus outbreak). I juxtaposed three photos from the hotel he stayed in with the view out the window of his room.

Robbie's journaling reads: I traveled to India (on business) for the first time at the end of January 2020. I flew into New Delhi (at 1:30am local time) and I actually stayed in Noida for the majority of my week-long visit. Even arriving so late (early?) at the airport, it was extremely crowded! While India is a beautiful country, I didn’t really get to see too much of it as the urban sprawl is even worse than here in the metroplex; traffic was HORRENDOUS and the air quality, due to constant smog, was very bad and visibility (even on a sunny day) was quite limited as a result. I stayed at a Radisson a few miles from where I was conducting business meetings; the hotel itself was very nice and the service was absolutely top-notch! The food was terrific and everyone there was extremely accommodating and very helpful. The opulence of the hotel itself, however, was in stark contrast to the surrounding area, because as soon as you moved off the hotel property (which was gated and guarded 24/7) the immediate area was extremely run-down, dirty, and made you feel like you were in an entirely different location. Regardless, I never felt ‘unsafe’, but I did find it slightly unnerving when I realized that the property guards at the hotel would check my Uber for explosives whenever I arrived back at the hotel! All in all, it was a decent experience for my first time to India – even under the guise of a business trip. Perhaps a return trip sometime down the road would be in order to better experience the country, its culture, and its people?

Right before this page in our album, I added a 6x12 page protector: the front holds memorabilia (airline tickets, hotel key cards, etc) from his January travels and the back showcases the view out his hotel windows in New York City and Boston. Fortunately, he has not had to travel since January, and his company has recently mandated that meetings be conducted virtually as we deal with the coronavius pandemic.

This asymmetrical design also worked well for a digital layout (using Cathy's page template from the DYL 2.0 class) highlighting a few photos from Daddy's birthday in early February.

As you can see, for the paper layout about India, I simply adapted Cathy's template/sketch to work with the photos and Robbie's journaling. I really like this design - you can see the pages I previously created with this layout digitally HERE and traditionally HERE.