Two Scots - one an experimental artist, the other a hat designer - have had their work recognised in a major competition to find Britain's most creative young talents.

William Chambers, a Glasgow-based milliner, and Katie Paterson, a Glaswegian artist based in London, won the most significant prizes in the Creative 30 competition, a series of awards designed to fine 30 of the nation's best young artists, musicians, designers, dancers and illustrators.

Chambers won the People's Prize after receiving the most votes from visitors to the website designed for the award. The prize comes at the end of a successful year for the hat and headpiece designer, which has also seen him nominated for the Scottish Fashion Awards.

The Panel Prize of £10,000 was won by Paterson, 27, for a series of imaginative art pieces inspired by ice and the Moon.

Since graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art last year, Paterson has had a series of solo shows in English galleries and spent time studying in Japan.

Her recent works include Earth-Moon-Earth, involving the transmission of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back, and Vatnajökull, a live phone line to an Icelandic glacier.

Paterson, originally from the west end of Glasgow, said she would use the prize money for living expenses, so she could concentrate on her art work and not have to take part-time jobs or other work to make ends meet.

She is now also thinking of moving to Berlin.

"It is amazing to win this, it is going to be such a great help. I will use it to concentrate on my practice, which is often expensive and very time-consuming. I am also thinking of moving to Germany where there is a great artistic community, and it's also a little cheaper than London."

Andy Capper, judging panellist and editor of Vice magazine, which sponsored the prize, said: "Katie's art was genuinely intriguing to everyone; it was unlike anything we had see in any of other entrants."

One of her works, Langjokull, Snaefellsjokull, Solheimajokull' was three recordings of glaciers in Iceland, cast into records made from ice, and played on turntables until they melted.

She enrolled at Edinburgh College of Art in 2004, and graduated with a degree in tapestry before living in Iceland and then studying at the Slade School of Art. She said the prize money had come as a relief as she had found it a "struggle to make a living."

Her work will be featured next year at the Tate in London in the Altermodern show and in New York.

Chambers, 29, who wins a car, creates bespoke hand-made hats, headpieces, bridal millinery and flowers, and is widely regarded as one of the most talented young designers in the country.

Yesterday he said that the prize would be a help to his millinery business, which he set up only a year ago.

"I was gobsmacked to win and I think it is already leading to a lot of recognition for what I do," he said.

"Why I chose to make hats is a good question - I was already working with textiles, and I love the fact that a hat is an object in itself, even before someone puts it on.

"I think of them as sculptures that are worn."

Birds and architecture are two subjects that Chambers cites as his inspiration for the shape, texture and detailing in his work. He mixes traditional materials such as felt and synamay with contemporary materials like latex, plastic and metallic leather.

He gained a first-class honours degree in textile design at the Scottish College of Textiles in 2002 and set up William Chambers Millinery in 2007 after attending a hat-making course in Glasgow.