Scraped Designs

Patterns are drawn carefully on a piece of bark with a tip of a small awl. With a damp cloth, wet the bark on the inside. The bark cannot be soaked in the water because the colour from the orange layer will stain the bark. Wet it about three or four times so that the natural colour from the orange layer from the inside of the birch bark will darken each time. The area surrounding the pattern is scraped away carefully with a knife, so that the moistened dark layer is removed and a lighter layer is exposed. The dark orange design stands out against the light background.