The walls of our modular terrain sets will often feature closed doors. This is often all you need to represent your playing area. What if you want to emphasize that a door is ajar? What if you want a door blown right off its hinges? Papercrafting makes that easy! This crafting tip is all about making your doors swing.

Scoring the hinges

If a door that opens normally is what you’re after, you’ll need to score parts to make a ‘hinge’ for the door to swing on.

Before we get to cutting, decide which side of the wall the door will open into. It may not matter, but you should consider this before making any modifications. The scoring will be done on the side that the door opens away from. Pay attention, too, to which side of the door the hinges are on. Cutting the wrong edge of the door will look very odd!

Score from the top corner of the doorway down to the base of the door. If the door is rounded at the top, begin the scoring just below the curve. For double doors, repeat on the opposite side of the door.

Always use your ruler for scoring! You want nice, clean, straight lines to bend the paper along.

Cutting the doors free

Cut along the top edge of the door, starting at the top of your score line. For double doors, you will cut from one score to the other, and then cut vertically along the middle of the doors. Once cut, bend the doors outward along the score.

Color in the edges

Edging the score lines will be easiest. Simply open the doors up all the way and run your marker along the fold line. Color around the cut edges of the door and the doorframe, too. Rounded doors can be more of a challenge. A brush tipped marker gets into tight areas more easily than the usual fine tipped marker. If you don’t have one, just take your time and be as careful as you can.

More details

Let your imagination run wild. It’s so easy to build more walls, you can experiment with different techniques. Try some jagged cuts to make a door seem like it’s been smashed in. Because the modular walls can be swapped in and out so quickly, you can replace a closed door with an open one on the fly. With a little creativity, you can even tape a board – or many boards – in place to seal it off and make it a more interactive experience.

Parting thoughts

The walls you’ll find in each Paper Realms modular terrain set are so quick to build, it’s easy to forget the little details that can make them even more fun. Hopefully this crafting tip reminds you that you don’t have to settle for flat every time!

If you’ve done some crafting already and are wondering about ways to improve your results, send us a photo of your work, and let us know what kind of paper, printer, glue and other tools you’re using. Sometimes a simple tweak to the process can improve the results a lot. It might just turn into a new Crafting Tip!