greetings...

i'm a newbie, literally. i'm just cutting my first bits of foam. just made an articulated hand! worked great...woohoo.

i'm following a pattern, but am wondering about matting the fur. my design is somewhere between "prairie dawn", "maury" (word on the street), and "oscar the grouch". i want that great grungy look of "oscar" and have played with a couple of hair gels, but haven't quite gotten the look i want.

any suggestions for techniques? many thanks ahead of time.

PS - i'm sooooo happy i found this site. i'm gobbling up info as fast as i can!!!

Put the fur in hot to boiling water, spin dry in the washing machine and hand to dry.  That's how I do it.  Test on a small piece first.

Welcome Chimei, and glad that you joined in and love this great resource and asked a question.  Puppetlady seems to have answered your question and hope it works out for you?

Daryl H

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff, as Daryl said it looks like your question has been answered. Let us see a picture of the finished product.

Billy D.

Wow, that's really all there is to it? I was wondering the same thing myself, because characters like Grover, Elmo and Oscar have that matted look to their fur, and I was trying to figure out how it was made to look that way. =] glad I ran across this information! =]

Here is a pic of some fur I just matted as Puppetlady suggested... will this be permanent however?



The color of the fur isn't right in this photo, my camera seems to have a hard time capturing detail in anything RED in color. I'm going to be using this to build a new monster puppet.

Normally matted fur stays that way unless you comb or brush it out.

wow that turned out well

I must not have done it right because as it dries, the fibers are separating and fluffing back out again. Would spray-starch help?

How "boiling" was your water? As a rule it stays matted. Spray starch might work. I would think it would act as a binder. Could be the make up of your fur also. I all truthfulness the times I've done it was no cheap fur... did you buy to nice of a fur.