Tapa Cloth recreation

You will make your own Tapa cloth using some brown paper, inks, dyes and bleach

1. 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

2. Add a border to go around the outside edge of your paper. You can also add pattern inside your motif. [PDF patterns below]

3. 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].

4. 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]

5. Use burnt umber [dark brown paint] to paint in some areas.

6. Use bleach to paint into some areas [thin white paint].

7. Use your marker to go back over any lines that may need doing.