RECYCLE STORIES
FROM NIGERIAN TEAM
As part of our annual parade and festival, we collaborate with our partners in Nigeria to promote our mission of repurposing and reusing materials to create unique hats.
The competition demonstrates their craftsmanship and storytelling abilities through their hat designs, focusing on creativity, neatness, adherence to the AI-generated concept, and innovative use of raw materials.
The photo gallery below features the A-I generated images or sample images the milliners were inspired by. Meet our team for 2024!
Brand Name:Vifeomaminds
🔴 Name: Ogunleye Vivian
⚫ Location: Lagos, Nigeria.
🟣 Material used:
Hat brim -13 pages of old magazine,
Hat crown - 6 pages of old magazine
old nylon-10 pieces, cardboard tissue paper rolls -18 rolls, evostic gum, oil, molds, scissors, knitting pin, dissolved stiffener, Petersham, and magic tape
🔴 Weight: 0.5kg
My RECYCLE Story
🟡 Name of Hat/Design Story:
I named my hat a " Recycled CaMuTop hat". It's a combination of a Capotain, Mushroom, and top hat. Additionally, it was made from recycled pieces, hence the name.
The hat's design, which transforms common waste materials into wearable art, conveys a story of metamorphosis with each fold and crease. As I got more involved, I was astounded by how technology and sustainability could coexist. I saw how creativity could be used to cut waste and conserve resources. In addition to sharing my artistic perspective, I also promoted a more environmentally friendly future. This hat acts
as a concrete reminder of the many opportunities that arise when we utilize recycling's creative potential.
⚫ Challenges Faced.
Creating my Recycled CaMuTop hat was quite challenging. It was at a point of relocation to another state and starting a new job, therefore I almost dropped off the challenge because of pressure from all sides. It was also challenging sourcing the cardboard from tissue paper rolls because the person in my house who uses the last tissue from the tissue throws it away because they are used to doing that. I had to ensure I monitored the tissue papers to ensure that the inner cardboard paper roll won't be discarded. Also, getting a mould for a crown as high as what I did from paper was impossible. I had to combine two crowns to get the height I got.
Another challenge I encountered was that of logistics. I thought to myself, since I would be relocating, how do I carry a hat as high as what I wanted to create? Therefore, I devised a means to make it detachable, which gave birth to a two in one hat.
🟣 How AI generated pictures enhanced my creativity:
AI helped me to skip the thinking process from the scratch. Once I had the AI generated image,I only had to build on that. I made some changes here and there and boom! my piece was formed.
Contact
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Brand Name:Wondercraft
🔴Name : Oluwaseun Odusile
⚫Location: Ogun State, Nigeria
🟣Materials:
Newspaper - 10sheets), old bedsheet fabric (3 layers), binding paper and wrappers, headband and hat wire,stiffener, top bond, hot glue, strawboard
🔴Challenges faced: Unblocking the formed piece from the block due to its dry state.
🟡How AI generated pictures enhanced your creativity: It helped with bring my design imagination to reality as a template to recreate.
🔴Weight: 500 gramsth site visitors.
My RECYCLE Story
🟢Name of hat/story behind hat: The Globe🌎.
My recycled piece was inspired by Earth Day, its peculiarities(land and sea), and the fact that the major source of existence and what we have around is gotten from plants. The leaves on my piece represent the cycle of a plant life, how it was processed into both paper and cotton to make fabric, which is about 90% of what makes up my piece. The earth is the most beautiful planet, and we need to celebrate and protect it!
Brand Name: JennyNG Craft and Design
🔴Name : Ngozi Jenniffer Enekweizu
🟡Brand name: JennyNG Craft and Design
⚫Location: Lagos
🟣Material used: American Avon advertisements newspaper, cake sticks, Stifiner, water, Uhu gum, milliner wire
🔴Weight: About 1.5kg
My RECYCLE Story
🟡 Name of the hat: No Name
⚫Challenges faced: Figuring out how to produce the exact picture generated by AI wasn't easy, but I finally scaled through, placing the cake sticks on the work becomes a long-term job.
🟣How AI-generated pictures enhanced your creativity: I am glad working with the ideas focused on AI-generated pictures. It helped me to expand my initiatives and ideas. It makes it easier for me to be more focused on a particular design
Brand Name: BELLE SIGNATURE
🔴Name Folake Okunaiya
🟡Brand name Belle Signature
⚫Location Lagos Nigeria
🟣Materials:
10 - sheets of full newspaper spread, 5 - magazine pages, fabric from an old cotton shirt, a small quantity of stiffener, water, hat wire, thread, a large brim, UHU gum, a plastic headband, and a velvet bias.
🟡Weight about 1kg
My RECYCLE Story
🔴Challenges faced : getting paper pieces with specific colour required was a bit of a challenge also recreating the look from the template was also challenging due to the shape and curved at the edges
🟡How AI generated pictures enhanced your creativity: My image was not AI generated, I used a template from last year's challenge and this inspired my creativity. I had to think through every step so as to create something close to the template.
🟢Name of hat / story behind hat of any: I wanted to create something classy and dressy that can be worn for an occasion and people around will wonder if it's real paper or a lookalike also I wanted something that had a touch of elegance and class and that's what the flowers symbolize on my hat and so I call the piece Ododo which means flower in my native Yoruba language. In Yoruba culture a flower is also used to exemplify a woman"s beauty
Brand Name: MARAEL CREATIONS
🔴Name: Jane Olaosebikan ! Minor
⚫Location: Ikorodu, Lagos. Nigeria.
🟣Materials;
(2) 36 pages plus of a whole newspaper, aluminum door adjuster 1 yard, stiffener, water, glue, uhu glue, glue gun, cherry fruit seeds (serve as button) spray to give it a lasting effect, and durability,
🔴Weight: about 1kg
My RECYCLE Story
🔴Name of the hat: book stalk
⚫Challenges faced: rolling paper wasn't easy, it took me 3 attempts to get it right and 2weeks to finish.
🟣How AI generated pictures enhanced your creativity: AI served as a guide to a good production of my mental feed to AI, in other word, AI guided my input(idea) to proper and realistic result.Challenges faced : getting paper pieces with specific colour required was a bit of a challenge also recreating the look from the template was also challenging due to the shape and curved at the edges
🟡How AI generated pictures enhanced your creativity: My image was not AI generated, I used a template from last year's challenge and this inspired my creativity. I had to think through every step so as to create something close to the template.
Brand Name: ELZibah SIGNATURE
🔴Name: Isioma Christabel Nwobilor
⚫Location Asaba, Delta, Nigeria
🟣Material used
➡1 newspaper
➡4 used plastic water bottles
➡Wood gum
➡Black fringe trimming
➡Beads and beading wire
➡Grey velvet ribbon
🔴Weight 0.0074kg
My RECYCLE Story
🟡 Name of the Hat - BLACK RAIN
The fringes on the hat Depicted the acid rain characterized by black raindrops during the rainy season experienced by part of south Nigeria due to illegal oil bunkering activities.
⚫Challenges faced.
✒Getting a hat block that would be suitable for this shape wasn't easy, I had to super-impose three hat blocks to be able to create my headwear
🟣How AI-generated pictures enhanced your creativity.
✒ Having a picture of the prototype, made the work easier as I had a picture of what was to be crafted, and didn't have stress to figure it out.
Brand name: Fusams Creative Company
🔴Name: Ibifuro Shedrack-Ogbodu
⚫Location: Ogba, Lagos. Nigeria.
🟣Materials:
4 sheets of Newspaper, 1 Sheet of pattern drafting paper, 1 yard of scuba fabric, 100g of stiffner, 50cl of water, fanta cover (Serve as beads) Gold Spray for the leave design and neutral spray for the body to give it a lasting effect and durability.
🔴Weight: about 1kg
My RECYCLE Story
🔴Challenges faced : getting paper pieces with specific colour required was a bit of a challenge also recreating the look from the template was also challenging due to the shape and curved at the edges
🟡How AI generated pictures enhanced your creativity: My image was not AI generated, I used a template from last year's challenge and this inspired my creativity. I had to think through every step so as to create something close to the template.
🟢Name of hat / story behind hat of any: I wanted to create something classy and dressy that can be worn for an occasion and people around will wonder if it's real paper or a lookalike also I wanted something that had a touch of elegance and class and that's what the flowers symbolize on my hat and so I call the piece Ododo which means flower in my native Yoruba language. In Yoruba culture a flower is also used to exemplify a woman"s beauty
Brand name: BLISSE & THRILLS SIGNATURE
🔴Name: Ibifuro Shedrack-Ogbodu
⚫Location: Ogba, Lagos. Nigeria
🟣Materials:
4 - sheets of Newspaper, 1 - Sheet of pattern drafting paper, 1 - yard of scuba fabric, 100g of stiffener, 50cl of water, fanta cover (Serves as beads) Gold Spray for the leave design, and neutral spray for the body to give it a lasting effect and durability.
🔴Weight: about 1kg
My RECYCLE Story
🟡 Name of Hat/Design Story:
The headpiece is named "TIARA" which means “Crown” or “Headdress” is worn to denote royalty. Tiara is an ancient Greek, Persian, and Latin word used to describe the crown worn by both noblemen and women. The idea behind The Tiara (Crown) Headpiece is to showcase the beauty, nobility, and strength of every person who graciously "wears multiple hats" without flinching. It is a unisex headpiece that's suitable for every nobleman and woman.
⚫ Challenges Faced.
I must say that creating this unique headpiece was quite an interesting adventure for me. I had to tear up and upcycle the first of a two-piece base I made. After realizing it wouldn't provide the sturdiness needed for the design I was creating. At the second attempt, the base turned out to be smaller and then I had to expand the width. In all, the challenges spiked up my creativity.
🟣 How AI-generated pictures enhanced my creativity:
With the use of AI, I was able to create an image that matches the idea I had in mind for my headpiece, this further gave me a temple to work with and I didn't have to work in abstract
🔴Challenges faced : getting paper pieces with specific colour required was a bit of a challenge also recreating the look from the template was also challenging due to the shape and curved at the edges
🟡How AI-generated pictures enhanced your creativity: My image was not AI-generated, I used a template from last year's challenge, which inspired my creativity. I had to think through every step so as to create something close to the template.