Hunted and Made: Bamileke

Showing posts with label Bamileke. Show all posts

Saturday, 8 March 2014

How To Make Your Own DIY Bamileke Inspired Juju Feather Headdress Hat

I posted about my Juju Hat obsession back in 2012 but never saved enough pennies to buy my own. While I would have absolutely love the real thing, $600 for the large sized version I'm after wasn't an option. Fortunately for me my newly created instagram account lead me to a brilliant, inspiring and crafty stylist who made her own. I was obsessed from this moment on, make my own Juju Hat = GENIUS!.

I firstly set about googling to find others who have diy-ed their own - Love Maegan, Vintage Farm Furniture and Katrina From The Block were some of the tutorials I used to get an idea of how to tackle this DIY.

Here is the Vintage Movement DIY pictorial Juju Hat demo...

To make a 60cm or 23" Juju style headdress you will need

Strung feathers - I used approx 3.6m or 4 yards (2 of white and 2 of burgundy)
Card board or backing board
Marking pen/ texta
Scissors
Hot glue and glue gun

Step 1. Find a round platter, bucket or mat to trace around with a diameter of about 35cm. Trace around and cut out the circle.

Step 2.
Taking our strung feathers and glue gun place glue dots around the edge of the circle and apply the feathers to the outer edge as seen in the image below.

Step 2.
Snip the feather string once you have covered the entire egde of the circle with feathers and then make a loose circle with the remaining feathers inside the circle as shown below - this will give you an idea of where to place and glue the next row. I spaced the row about 1 or so inch apart (you can make your rows close together or spaced as wide as you like). Then glue the second row.

Step 3.
Now continue with your third row of measuring and then gluing. For me this meant switching to my darker feathers. As these feathers were slightly curved I chose to glue them curve side curling up.

Step 4. Final step
To cover up the inner row and ribbon edge simply curl a small section of feathers and glue to fasten. Then glue this to the center over the final round row/ring.

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

DIY Bamileke Style Headdress

A few weeks ago I posted about my obsession with Bamileke Headdress or Julu Hats and how I am on the lookout for one... ideally I wanted it to be about 1 meter or about a yard in diameter and either white or a bright hue. So far nothing has presented itself and in my impatience I decided to DIY it in a round about way, my version doesn't have feathers but it was lots of fun to create and has added a nice element to our room while I wait for the real thing!.

Inspired by the lovely Tania Maree of Scandi Coast Home, I painted my DIY Headdress in British Paints Pool House and June Sky .... you can check out her stunning feathered headdress here

I stumbled across this round wicker display piece on a trip to a homewares store in Thornbury and thought I could do something with that! It was a one off clearance sample for $30, I couldn't say no and went straight to Bunnings to choose the paint!

What would I do without sample pots!.

When I started painting the sun was shining and in typical Melbourne style by the time I finished the first coat the weather turned!.

it then rained for the rest of the afternoon

So the rest of the painting was completed in the garage

Voila! xx

Monday, 1 October 2012

Tribal Trance - My Bamileke Headress Julu Hat Obsession

I am in a tribal trance, currently obsessed with finding a vintage Bamileke Headdress for my home.. a bami-li what? You may not know what they are called but you would have seen them adorning the walls of stylish pads world wide. Traditionally used by the people of Cameroon as a tribal headdress, I am in ore of the clever designer that decided to flatten and wall mount these beauties!. Ranging in price from $200 - $700+ and also known as Julu Hats or a Cameroon Headdress, together with the resurrection of kilim rugs and chevrons I am just loving the new tribal.