How to Dye Craft fur for my Monster puppet

How to Dye Craft fur

It appears that it is not an easy job to dye Long pile Craft Fur.

The fabric’s dyes don’t work properly as the craft fur actually is a Plastic fibre not a fabric
I needed faded olive green fur to make an old grumpy monster Puppet –Custom order and the suppliers of craft fur offer very limited
choice of colours especially of the Long pile fur.

So the only option was to customise somehow one of the existing green colours.
Firstly I started to experiment with bleach but even though I tried different kind of bleach (thick and thin) and different length of the treatment it did not work the bright green colour did not fade .

Then I continued to experiment with some multi-purpose spray paints but again was unsuccessful

In pure desperation as my customer had paid a deposit and the design was approved but I did not have material to work with (( ,I looked for other ideas and found a tutorial of how to dye a craft fur with acrylic paint.

I followed this tutorial and YES it worked
tested the colours on little pieces and the customer liked the colour No 2

I have bought good quality art acrylic paints as advised and some basic ones, but then the perfect tint was from the basic range and i worked with basic acrylic paint on the end

Then I have mixed the paint with water (improvised on the quantities of the water and the paint) I have used a blender (this was my contribution to the process )to get rid of the little lumps

Then applied the liquid to the fur with brush

I have Left the fur to dry as the idea is as the water evaporates ,it leaves the fabric dyed , well it took 4-5 days to dry most of the time outside and I took it in the night

Then I brushed the dyed fur until it returns it’s fluffy appearance,
this exercise took a bit of a time and finally I got it - the perfect material for my Old Grumpy Monster puppet


The fur lost some of its quality and looked a bit worn but actually I was happy with the result, as the character supposed to be an old and worn and grumpy and this material was just what I needed

there was a down point , the material kept the odour of the acrylic paint

My Old and Grumpy monster

www.puppetsinabag.co.uk