Matrices

I had someone message me on Instagram politely asking why fursuits cost what they do. I had a little time tonight to delve into specifics to help enlighten them and others who have asked this same question.

EXAMPLE SCENARIO: A full fursuit that costs $4500 from a professional maker. This isn’t even considered all that high a price today but it’s a fairly average price for us currently, so we’ll use that as an example.

- MATERIALS: 6 yds fur: $125 - 230 half roll 1/2” foam: $15 half roll 1” foam: $15 half roll blue foam: $6 spray glue: $12 plasti-dip: $14 minky/vinyl/fleece fat quarters: $15 glue sticks: $7 2 spools thread: $7 pens, pencils, pins, chalk, etc: $5 2 rolls masking tape: $4 tagboard for drafting patterns: $2 thrift store sheets for testing patterns: $10 polyfil: $10 eye plastic, buckram, paints, zippers, misc: 30 spandex and other lining fabrics: 17 shipping box, tape, packing materials: $8 __________ MATERIALS -$300 - $405

-Payment Fees Every electronic payment service will charge fees for using them- the fees are fairly comparable between Paypal, Square, and Stripe. Mailed payments are possible for less or no fees, but you can’t beat the convenience of electronic payments.

PP FEES ON 4500: -$130

- TAXES: Self employed people have to set aside around 20% of all their earnings for taxes. So 20% of 4500 is $900. Tax refund?? Don’t know her!

- ACTUAL PAY? So $4500 fursuit minus cost of materials, taxes, and fees actually equals around $3100 in pay. And this is assuming no mistakes are made during fursuit construction that require more materials to be purchased, your equipment doesn’t need maintenance, and you don’t need any special materials not listed above. Also, I estimated the fur price based on a $21-35/yd, but faux fur can cost $65 a yard and higher depending on what it is.

OTHER PRICING FACTORS:

- SUPPLY/DEMAND: Anyone in the market for a fursuit has undoubtedly noticed that virtually every full time maker usually has a full queue and opens for commissions infrequently. When a popular maker opens, they usually get to pick and choose what projects they want to take on and inevitably have to turn down some applicants. Despite there being more and more professional fursuit builders out there taking commissions, demand for fursuits continues to rise, and there’s still not enough makers to fill the demand. It is a seller’s market- we are able to raise prices yearly and demand does not waver. It’s anyone’s guess when/where we’ll find the ceiling on this market.

- NICHE GOODS: Fursuits are super niche market and only a relative few of us can 1. produce professional quality costumes 2. successfully run a home business and stay on top of deadlines, finances, customer service, etc So if professional fursuit builders are a rare breed, those who are reliable and timely are basically a unicorn. Niche markets for luxury items equals luxury prices.

- TIME TAKEN TO CREATE: Fursuits are a lot of work! There’s no getting around it. Even those of us who have been doing this a long time can take between 75-150 hours to create a typical fullsuit on average, and this doesn’t include all the other work like research, brainstorming, emails, social media, web shop maintenance, and packing + shipping.

- EXPERTISE: If you’ve been working at the same job for years, you can expect to make more money than someone just starting. The same is true for fursuit builders! We deserve raises as cost of living increases yearly and as we get better at our jobs. So it is not uncommon at all to see fursuit builders gradually increasing their prices year by year.

- NO JOB BENEFITS: Working for yourself is rewarding but also expensive. If you’re doing this full time and don’t have anyone else supporting you, you have to provide your own healthcare and make sure you have extra money saved for sick time, vacation days, all the stuff traditionally employed people don’t have to think about.

It is easy to be dazzled by the prices professional fursuit builders are charging and imagine we must be loaded, but all in all it is quite a modest lifestyle. Those makers who haven’t gotten fast/confident at building and don’t have a huge fan following may really genuinely struggle in the beginning (which is why I wouldn’t recommend just diving on into professional fursuit building without a plan or fallback). The most successful of us are still definitely not rich. We budget for the things we want and we need and have to weigh carefully any trips or luxuries, just like anyone.

Professionally made fursuits are not affordable to all, it’s true- that’s actually why I started making fursuits, I wanted one but couldn’t afford it. I still can’t justify spending the money to have someone custom create something for me, my lifestyle just doesn’t support that kind of luxury spending.

Matrices’ Favorite Fruit Dessert!! 

Its about time I share my favorite fruit dessert recipe with you all. Super duper simple, you can do a lot of variations to make it with different fruit or even add bonus flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg for apples, or change its texture by swapping out the flour for bisquick. If you want more sticking power for your crumbs, you can also try a 2nd egg in the recipe. 

I make this all the time with whatever’s fresh in proportions that I have on hand (sometimes in cartoonishly small portions, its very easy to make this recipe small for one, or make it big for many people – or to last one person a few days… >_>) my all time favorite combo is with fresh picked blackberries or raspberries, but for the above version I used apples, and in the step-by-step photos below, I used a mix of blackberries I picked myself and frozen store-bought blueberries.

The Recipe

1 cup sugar

1 cup flour

1 large egg

2-4 cups of berries, or 2-3 large apples sliced (you can even try other fruits!)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

around 4-6 tablespoons of butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. 

The sugar and flour is stirred together, then combined with the egg to make the crumb mixture. It will be fairly dry.

Butter your pan that you plan to cook in, and lay the fruit of your choice in the pan so it covers the bottom. Sprinkle the lemon juice on top.

Pile the crumb mixture on the top of your fruit. If there is extra, spread it to the sides of your pan but do not mix it in.

Drizzle the melted butter fairly evenly all over the top, this will help it brown! 

Bake it at 375 ºF for around 35 minutes. The shallower and thinner spread your fruit, the less cook time, closer to 35 minutes. The deeper and thicker the fruit and the pan you use, the more cook time will be needed.

It is ready when the crumb mixture gets toasty brown and the fruit filling starts to bubble up the edges and through the top.

Serve warm or cold! Try it on its own, or with ice cream or fresh whipped cream!

Photo Steps

Stir together 1 cup sugar 1 cup flour.

Add 1 large egg.

Stir it together until it resembles crumbs. It will be fairly dry like this.

Butter the sides and bottom of your pan. Then add the fruit of your choosing so it covers the bottom. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon lemon juice over the fruit.

Pile the crumb mixture on top of your fruit. 

Spread any excess to the sides of the pan (but do not mix it in).

Drizzle the melted butter on the top fairly evenly. Its ok if it doesn’t cover everything. This helps your crumb mixture brown (and lends yummy buttery taste of course)! 

Place it in the center of the preheated oven for around 35 minutes. The shallower and thinner spread your fruit, the less cook time, closer to 35 minutes. The deeper and thicker the fruit and the pan you use, the more cook time will be needed.

This is about the look you are after!

Here’s the finished dessert! Allow it to cool a bit before digging in, but it is super delicious served warm! And just as good served cooled completely, too! 

Making a fursuit body isn’t as hard as it might seem! With these tips you will be able to make a perfectly fitted fursuit body! When it comes to bodysuits it really helps to have a sewing machine as part of this process, while it is possible to entirely hand-sew a body – using a sewing machine will save you an immense amount of time! Faux fur is very forgiving, and some traditional sewing techniques you may have in your background just don’t work on things like fursuit zippers. Let’s get started and learn about the wonderful craft of making a fursuit body!

Materials:

Sewing machine

Regular Polyester Thread

Muslin fabric or flat sheets up-cycled from a thrift store.

Long Pins and/or clips

Safety-pins

Soft measuring tape

Straight edge

Seam ripper

Chalk (or something to mark your fur fabric with) and a Permanent Marker

Scissors

Snap-off extendable razor blade

Faux fur in the colors and lengths of your choice.

Large-toothed Plastic Parka Zipper

Comb or pet slicker brush

Optional: 

Masking Tape

Double fold bias tape

Making Toony Eyes from Upcycled Materials

Upcycling is also known as “creative re-use” and it is a concept I like to incorporate a lot in my costumes and a concept worth sharing with others! This tutorial will cover how to make eyes for a fursuit by being resourceful with available materials to create cartoony eyes for your mask. This technique yields eyes with good visibility that also help with ventilation.

Materials

One large plastic bowl.

If you can’t find bowls, you can substitute empty detergent bottles (such as bleach or laundry soap), cutting boards, plastic bins, etc. If it is plastic and the right size, you can use it!! 

Look for HDPE recyclable label, it can help you narrow things down!

Scissors.

Razor knife.

Mesh for your eyes

Acrylic paint and sponge to apply the iris color. (And/or paint pens, brushes, etc.)

Fabric or stiff felt for eyelids.

Hot glue and glue gun. 

Pencil 

Paper for templates.

Optional:

Drawing compass or circle templates.

Sandpaper

Hair dryer. (to make plastic easier to cut)

Sealer spray

e6000 adhesive

Pins or masking tape

Fleece fabric to prepare the eye socket area.

Here are some examples of upcycled materials, like the plastic bowls used. Vinyl for dimensional eyelids, and an example of cartoony eyes that will be shown in this tutorial alongside other works in progress.

What Plastics to Look For

This tutorial is all about being resourceful! Upcycling objects that could work takes a bit of guessing, but you can narrow it down by searching for the recyclable logo for HDPE. It is often labeled with the above logo in North America. HDPE stands for “High Density Polyethylene”

In this guide I recommend seeking out plastic bowls. They are perfect for the gradual convex shape that cartoony character eyes have. If you can’t find bowls, you can substitute empty detergent bottles (such as bleach or laundry soap), flexible cutting boards, plastic bins, etc. If it is plastic and the right size, you can use it!!

Try to avoid plastics that are too thick or are brittle. If you can flex the plastic with your hands and it doesn’t crack, then its useful for this task. Most HDPE can be cut with scissors!

If want to buy new rather than upcycling, you have a Tap Plastics store around, they sell HDPE in many colors! Including white, yellow, light blue, black, etc! They come in large plastic sheets for under $10. This will last many many projects if you buy an entire sheet of it. Some locations have scraps you can purchase, or they may have cutting services available as well. If you just want a small piece, re-sellers are listed on my Fursuit & Crafting Resources page. 

HDPE is used in so many common household plastic products that I definitely recommend trying to upcycle first before buying new. 

How to make a zip on tail!

A tutorial for skilled tailors. This guide teaches you how to create a zip-on tail so you can have a beautiful smooth transition between bodysuit and tail that is still removable for washing or storage! 

There’s a few requirements to make this addition to your project easier to construct: This should be done before you make your tail, so your tail can be made to the size of the zipper. The zipper slider planned and oriented to match the body so your tail aligns correct. Also this should be done before you sew the front half of your body to the back half!

Basting tips! 

For some curved seams basting instead of pinning can really speed up the machine sewing process!

Pinning along curves tends to be easy to fumble, poke you, or be so closely spaced there are a tons of pins to hold everything down. And it can simply add an extra layer of challenge to sewing with a sewing machine. Basting is a pretty good alternative solution for paw pads, fingertips, curves, or anything with a tight angle to it where pins are clunky and get in the way!

Start with your curved opening. 

The above is an opening for a paw pad on a shaped set of handpaws. It is a curve that goes around where the pad gets sewn in, but also up along the paw’s digit.

Cut out the part of your pattern that will be basted in. This can be any other material, including fur. If your pattern has darts (the wedge-shaped triangles on the right of the pattern) sew those together before you baste your pieces.

Prepare your needle as a single thread – don’t tie it off!

Begin basting by using wide looping stitches. Space them like you would pins!

It doesn’t have to look pretty, its just temporary to hold the complex shape in place! Temporarily, just like pins! 

You don’t even have to stitch closely at all, or even spend time tying off that thread (it will be easier to remove if you do not tie anything off when doing this)

Sew your basted pattern pieces with a sewing machine. No pins to get in the way! You can use your favorite stitch to sew your fabric pieces together.

You can go quickly without having to pause to remove anything! Basting makes your project easier to handle and manipulate without getting poked.

Here is the sewn paw pad. It does not hurt to leave the basting in place. (This will save you time! Especially if it is going to be hidden by stuffing). But you can easily remove the temporary basting stitching by pulling on the thread or snipping it away. 

What is safe for marking on faux fur when fursuit making?

I did a test with surprising result! You are looking at a bleed test on faux fur using alcohol, a very common fursuit maintenance product.

Image caption:

(Left) Results after a few seconds. (Right) Control/Before

❌ Sharpie red ❌ Sharpie green ❌ Sharpie black ✅ Paint pen black ❌ Highlighter yellow ✅ Prismacolor Blue ✅ Crayola Brown ✅ Charcoal black ✅ Pencil #2 ✅ Quilter’s washout silver ✅ Quilter’s washout blue ❌ Ballpoint pen black

Share these results with your friends or maker so they can see, and encourage them to test it for themselves on scraps before they start a project. 

Not shown in the test is a lot of other marking things, this serves as an example of what you can do to see for yourself. So if you’re worried about it, test it! 

How to sew bias tape in faux fur so the edge is hidden! 

Use single fold bias tape. It is relatively thin in width and has two ironed folds in the fabric strip.

Pin or clip the bias tape to the fur side. Line up the unfolded bias tape facing UP, with the edge of the fur fabric lined up with the edge.

Sew, using the fold of the bias tape as a guide for a straight sewn line. 

Fold over the sewn edge.

Clip or pin in place, allow the other side of the bias tape’s fold to be tucked under. 

Comb the fur away from the predicted sewing path. This can be skipped if you are confident in your brushing-out-fur skill, but brushing fur out on an edge can sometimes be a time commitment, so its simply easier to comb it aside before sewing in this case since it is right on the edge.

Sew it a second time. Use a wide stitch length this time (4 mm or so) to make combing any remaining trapped fur easier.

Comb any remaining fur that might have gotten trapped during the sewing step.

Enjoy your finished and HIDDEN bias tape edge! This technique is great for necklines, hemming cuff edges, handpaw cuff edges, or other area where you wish to finish the edge off, but do not actually want the bias tape to become a visible decoration seen on the outside of the costume piece.

Most faux fur fabric you will encounter simply does not tend to unravel, but there are a very very small handful of faux furs that do (you will know if you have it, if you test a swatch and stretch it at the edge it will run like nylon leg stockings do) so this technique was developed to counteract that issue.

In hindsight, this is a much better format, especially in the case of those reading on that use an online translator to translate the tutorial text into a different language.

Edge softening using a slicker brush.

Did you know you can soften a “raw” edge on faux fur by brushing it a little with a slicker brush? This is done by using a slicker brush on the backing of the faux fur. 

Some furs work better than others with this technique– so like with all the tips I share – test on scraps first! 

Where could this possibly be useful? Maybe along a zipper edge to soften it up, maybe on cuffs that have a really hard-looking edge. Perhaps on faux fur hair tufts, the edge of a neckflap that lifts, anywhere you think up! 

Don’t go overboard, this is a one-way technique, once it gets pulled through it has to be shaved off to be removed, then you simply have less fur in that spot, oops!

Fur does not tend to unravel, but there are some spots where some little white fibers will come loose. They also only tend to unravel so far. You should discover this in testing, but if you find it happening on a finished project, carefully snip them off, its not the end of the world. :D

I am sure many of you get the question all the time while fursuiting, “isn’t it hot in there?” .. well, it can be if you don’t have a fan! Not all fursuit heads have the luxury of good ventilation, so getting a fan in there is something that can help airflow. 

A lot of people aren’t mechanically inclined, so hopefully this tutorial can break down the steps easily enough to allow someone who has never done this before to make their own simple fan setup.

This tutorial covers the technique for putting a simple switch on a small fan, and how to hook it up to a USB cord to use with a power bank or one 9v battery, with a toggle switch to turn it on and off.

Materials:

Computer fan of your choosing (I used these: https://amzn.to/2It3cTp)

Switch (I used these: https://amzn.to/2Uwe1pC)

USB cord (old phone cords work) & Power bank (I tested & used the fans I made with https://amzn.to/2Dmkwpb, others work too!)

Scissors and/or razor knife

Shrink tubing (1/16" and 1/8″ to 3/16" if you are using the linked fans & switches)

Lighter

Wire cutter

Optional but extremely helpful

Soldering iron, Solder, & flux

Ruler, Measuring tape, or string (to judge wire lengths and distances for where to mount your fan in your head)

Wire stripper

Clamps/clips to hold your wires as you solder

Totally optional

Electrical tape (instead of shrink tubing)

9v connector + battery (instead of usb cord + power bank)

Plastic mesh to mount your fan parts to

Velcro or snaps for installing a removable fan

Start by having all of your materials ready. Most of the electronic bits (the fans, the toggle switches, battery connectors, and even the soldering gun) can be purchased online. If you are lucky enough to have an electronics store nearby you can pick up the parts there too.

Wire Assembly

Begin by planning out how much wiring you want and where you might put your fan, your switch, and battery. Measure out distances of your wires, but also still leave yourself a bit of wiggle room, you just don’t want excess dangling wires inside of your costume/mouth/face/etc or hindering you from putting your costume on and off!