Tapa Cloth

What you need: - Paper - Pencil - Eraser - Ruler - Black Marker (sharpie) - Brown Crayon - Black Crayon You can experiment with other coloured crayons

Step One: Take your piece of paper and pencil and draw your tapa design.

Step Two: Colour in any pieces you want to be black with the black crayon.

Step Three: Go over your design using a black marker.

Step Four: Using the brown crayon colour over the whole piece of paper.

Step Five: Scrunch up your piece of paper into a ball. Once you have scrunched it up, flatten your piece of paper back out again. Be careful not to rip your piece of paper. Step Six: Repeat step 5 several times until your piece of paper feels soft (a bit like fabric). You have now finished your very own piece of tapa!

Tapa Cloth Tapa Cloth (or tapa) is not actually a woven material but a cloth made from the bark of a mulberry tree. The bark is split into long strips and then soaked in the sea. Once the bark is supple (soft and flexible) the bark is beaten to a pulp using hardwood slabs and a wooden stick. The cloth strips are then joined together to make one piece of cloth. The cloth is dried in the sun. Once it is dried it is decorated with traditional patterns and symbols. Tapa is usually only two or three colours, black, brown and red. Different names for Tapa in different Pacific Islands – Ngatu – Siapo – Hiapo Hawai’i – – Masi - Nemasitse