Tapa Cloth
Siapo (tapa cloth) is usually made from the inner bark of the u'a (paper mulberry tree), and decorated with natural dyes from a range of trees, plants, and clays
Tapa Cloth recreation
You will make your own Tapa cloth using some brown paper, inks, dyes and bleach
On an A3 piece of brown paper, select a motif to go into the centre of the piece [refer to the PDFs below]. Outline your motif in black marker
Add a border to go around the outside edge of your paper. You can also add pattern inside your motif. [PDF patterns below]
colour in some solid areas of your pattern with your marker - refer to images on this page. Leave some areas to be painted dark brown and some to be lightened with bleach [or light wash of white paint].
Distress your paper by running under the tap and scrunching up. It's pretty tough paper so you don't have to be overly gentle, if it does tear a bit - that's ok also. While scrunched up, dab some brown dye to edges and scrunch up further. Unfold a bit, add more dye and rescrunch - continue until you get an uneven mix of brown across the work. Unfold and leave flat to dry [it should look like bark paper]
Use burnt umber [dark brown paint] to paint in some areas.
Use bleach to paint into some areas [thin white paint].
Use your marker to go back over any lines that may need doing.
