All of The Travelling Bookbinder’s workshops show How to: Travel Through Books. Venice Personal Geographies, with its focus on mapping journeys, does this in a very particular way, but any book that you make, or read, helps imaginative escape.

Venetian doors and windows, with their variety of architectural influences, can symbolise so many things: moving from one threshold to another, layers of history and past inhabitants. Literal and metaphorical travellers can immerse themselves in the melting-pot of meaning…or just enjoy the shapes.

You’ll need:

• A strip of paper or thin card
• A bone folder
• Scissors and/or a scalpel
• Ink and a brush, or pencils, crayons, pastels…
• A cutting mat

Step-by-step:

First fold your strip in half.

Then fold one half back on itself.

And then fold that flap on top to meet the quarter point.

Repeat those last two steps on the other half of the strip.

Simply dividing in half.

Until you get this curious profile. Reverse fold the crease that’s right in the middle of the strip. By that, I mean fold it in the opposite direction.

Like this.

Finally fold the wider two sections in half, so that each ‘page’ is the same size.

Yay! A concertina with eight narrow spreads.

I do like the proportions; elegantly slim.

Ready to paint!

Have a search for images of Venetian doors or windows, and sketch some shapes that appeal. I’m drawn to fairly simple arched windows. Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice would no doubt help me to identify the provenance of each column and arch-shape, but I’m happy just making it up.

Free-style marks.

Love, as ever, what the water colour ink does.

First set of arches complete.

When dry, use a scalpel or scissors to cut out the tops of the shapes.

Very satisfying seeing a pattern emerging.

Here’s an even simpler shape, using scissors to cut away the top pieces.

Here’s a medley of Venetian doors! One even opens.

And three different styles and sizes together.

Experiment with proportion, repetition and colour.

The blank spaces are longing to be filled with words, but who’s? Is there anything on the back, behind the doors/windows?

We’d love to see! Please tag @paperhazell or @thetravellingbookbinder with how you have travelled through books. And if you can’t join us in Venice in October, you have journeyed through, and beyond.