Awww, shucks Shawn. Good to know I'm not totally backward in my approach! Maybe I didn't buy the right gasket rubber... I bought one that was just awful - it was so flexible you could have squished the puppets face up if that makes sense? The other was not at all malleable and just felt heavy and cumbersome. I like the foam as it's easy, if you want you can sew in to it for added strength and it's cheap - I keep all my scraps for mouth pieces. Happy days!

I used craft foam and felt for my puppet mouths:
http://schoolofpuppetry.com.au/media/patterns/humanfoampuppetpattern%20partone.pdf

Thanks for the offer of fur, but I've moved exclusively into shadow puppets now. Actually I have off-cuts of cheap fur from Spotlight to get rid of myself...

I do recommend avoiding Lincraft; prices are higher and there's less 'craft' and more 'haberdashery and wedding' if you know what I mean.

I have found Spotlight's no-pill fleece to be quite good though.

Do you know, I completely forgot about this place: http://www.darncheapfabrics.com.au/
There's one sort of local to me and I've found their selection to be quite good. Not a lot of furs, but as the title suggests, what they do have is very cheap. I've found satin and silk in there for 1/2 of what Spotlight charges. ... I just looked at their online fur selection and it's small, but yeah cheap: $10-15 p/metre. But shipping looks to be as much as the fur, if not more (to postcode 2000 as a test).

Cheers Na. I'll look into that one. Not sure why it's so hard to find....

My guess is, like a lot of materials, they're made overseas. Shipping them is expensive, and there's probably less of a market for them here than elsewhere.

Incidentally, my best materials experience was in South Korea. I had gone to Seoul and my friend from there took me to the local shops. We went into giant superstores - imagine the size of Bunnings only going upwards - full of fabrics, craft materials, and stationary. This is in the middle of town, for general consumption and not for industrial supply. Ever since I've been seriously disappointed with the supplies on offer here.