Can I ask how you go about sharpening scissors? I've been trying with mine to no avail. I also reuse poly fill and foam scraps as much as possible.

There are little products you can buy that will look similar to this. http://www2.fiskars.com/var/fiskars.....roduct_main.png

and basically you are cutting your scissors on it and it sharpens them.
If you can't find a product for a good price you can also buy a honing stone for kitchen knife sharping and hone the blades against that.
I've done that to reuse x-acto blades that I wanted to keep.

Those are exactly what I use as well:

http://amzn.com/B0019N4X8C

Get a honing stone! And follow the outside of the scissor blades (so you don't "open" then where the blades should meet for the cut). Sharpen away, and doing it by hand is safe since it's hard to overdo it or make big mistakes.

At my job we have those green scouring pads to clean our coffee pots, cappuccino machine parts, etc. with. They come in sheets that are too big and we noticed when we cut them in half it sharpens our scissors really well. If you wash dishes by hand that would be a good option.

I have both the fiskers sharpeners(About 9 bucks for a big black and orange block that you shove the blades into, follow instructions on the back) and a whetstone for my good shears.

people will buy little pieces of faux fur - i know i do. and i mean little, teeny weeny tiny scraps - if i can't sew them or glue them i'll use them to stuff things. you would be absolutely shocked at the garbage that people are willing to pay cash for lol

I would suggest making larger realistic reptile/other tails out of your foam scraps! Just chop the scraps up as finely as possible and fill a tail that drags on the ground with it. Its rather light and also makes for great movement!

Some things I've found work pretty well is saving pieces of foam that are a bit more than a few millimeters and using scraps unless it's beyond hope or is like one small weft though those could in theory be used for art dolls and potentially even accents on ears and things. Though I'd try to keep the small scraps reserved for areas that don't rely on much movement since they are a bit weaker than say an entire strip of fur.

What you could do with the foam scraps that are little shavings is use them for stuffing in padding and tails. Worst case scenario you could talk it over with your commissioner to see if it's alright to stuff them with those. I've found stuffing something with scraps works pretty well. Then the foam and fur scraps also work well for dtds. One thing you could try is with the tiny foam scraps, stuff them in lycra pillows and use them to stuff the dtds. While I haven't tried it on a large scale it seems to work well.

For castings what you could do is keep one cup a and one cup b and mix them both together in a separate cup. I'm not too sure about using glass though. Especially if you use Onyx or the professional grade resins. Plus those plastics never completely come out. Anyways what I was saying. You could measure them out equally in the separate cups then pour them both into another cup that way you know you got the right amount but you can also reuse the cups up to 3 times give or take.
If you keep the two separate ones marked you'd probably be able to go a while with only throwing out one cup. You could also save the popcorn buckets and various other food cups and buckets from fast food places for mixing your stuff in. So instead of just finishing your drink and trashing it you can use it a couple more times.

OMG lycra pillows...You are a geniussss!

:) glad you like the idea.
Fursuit building on a budget definitely has taught me a lot

I think just fixing tools and broken things-- the amount of raw materials, and electricity used just to REFINE the raw materials into finished goods, let alone all the rest-- if you can grind an edge or re-bolt something, all that gets saved.

Good on you for raising this point. :o

When I was making a foam head, I just recycled everything in the recycling bin. I have a whole bag of turquoise fur that still needs to be used and a few pieces of foam. I have since stopped trying with suits so I don't know what I'm gonna do with it.

What I usually just do in general is toss out the really small pieces in the recycling bin and keep the larger pieces for future use. It does cut down a bit on what I will never use.
Using the scraps to fill dummies is a good idea too.

I can't offer much help as far as the resin goes. Never worked with it. However, is it an okay thing to pour in the sink if you decide to use glass jars instead? :\ If not, toss-away cups are your best option.
Best way I think is just use a little of them as possible, depending on their size of course and how much resin you need.

And toss whatever is allowed into the recycling bin! :) I use A LOT of paper in my origami stuff and it doesn't belong in any old regular garbage bag.

I wonder if scraps of fur and fabric might be useful to local schools, either for craft use for younger kids or for costuming use in the drama departments of high schools.

Some adoption agencies will accept foam and fabric scraps, I believe, in order to stuff beds for the animals! Might be worth looking into.

I sell fur bits open-hand-sized and larger, my small fur scraps and foam scraps go into pillowcases bought and thrift stores then sewn shut for our dogs and cats to lay on (note none of our dogs are shredders, do not make said pillows for dogs known to chew things up) said pillows are used till filthy then thrown away, still trash in the long run but at least used :)

*bought at
friggen typo XC

Also my duct tape dummy stuffing was a thrift store find, 3 huge garbage bags of what I assume was fake snow, it is a course pillow-stuffing-like product and a wonderful recycle-reduce-reuse find for filling dtds

We used to have a foam factory in town, I'd buy 8" thick blocks for super cheapsies (once got 8"x4'x8' for $60) and bring back my scraps that would get shredded and made into foam carpet pad. I don't know how to find another, but perhaps look for similar things?

Cant tear eyes away from paula deen, lol.

Yeah I'm going to look into returning bigass bags of it for recycling.

This might sound a little strange but if you have loose fur scraps (like what you shaved off) the birds could use it in the spring/early summer to build their nests. After I brush my fursuit I put the loose fur in a suet cage and they're all over it.

Oh my gosh that's a great idea! I never thought of that :D

Perhaps put bags of tiny scraps on Freecycle. I see people asking for little scraps of felt and fabric and such all the time.

Do you have a local foam specialty dealer, or is it coming from Jo-Ann, etc? Our local foam guy Bob recycles it...shreds for beanbag filling if it's clean.

Also, a thing for uncured resins, etc.: measure A & B in separate cups as normal. Pour A into B, stir. Then pour A+B into the residual A cup, stir more, pour into mold. Residue & leftovers in both cups should fully cure now...but you can also use the residue to 'run over' any stir sticks, paper towels, etc. that touched only part A or B (or stir atop small spills on the workbench, which can be peeled or chiseled off after curing).

I've seen some awesome fursuits made from scraps. Sometimes serious, sometimes for comedic effect. Puppet and plush makers might also have use for smaller pieces.

Hm. I'll check around, I buy my stuff online and I think the foam factory closed down a few years ago.

I do the thing! But I always end up with uncured bits in each cup when its done :(

Scrape more! Stir more! Leave no driblet unturned.

Oh! Another one: cured silicone (old molds, excess remainders from pouring, etc.) can be ground up and reused as filler (mixed with fresh silicone) for outer layers of new molds.

And of course there's always COLLEGE BUTT FOAM!

oh god
college butt foam
lol

throw it in the bay, I support the "pave the bay" movement. :P you are about the first I have ever heard of caring about the enviornment when it comes to fursuit making.

tiny scraps of foam and fur I bag to stuff things with. Like little plushies and such

The shaved bits of fur as odd as it sounds I would be interested in. I make sulptues and I can you them as a tecture for them etc

What I really want to do is set up a large scale container I can fill with my foam scraps and then pour a thin layer of flex-foam it! over the whole dang thing and end up with a new sheet of foam, basically.

I'm going to have to find a way to effectively break down larger chunks of foam first into like small raisin sized pieces.

ah interesting that would be cool

What about the shaved fur peices?

Someone suggested using them as gifts for birds to make their nests from, but as they're plastic fibres I'm not too sure. Possibly as stuffing?

Hmm yeah Im not sure about that bits of nest get ingested sometimes and the plastic might be hard on them but they might not even pick it up to use it anyways who knows.

Stuffing could work too but be aware of the fabric type or it could fur splinter through

Also I would not mind takeing some of it off your hands zip lock bags worth or more of every color you use. I could use it for miniatures etc etc

Oh yeah sure man, I'll save the scraps.

I would be worried about killing birds with the plastic fibres, yeah. Or the fibres killing fish or lizards or something. I think as a fibre-fill replacement they would work fine, though.

let me know how that goes
ive been wondering what to do with my foam scraps as well. Other than for stuffing things i cant seem to figure out a use for them
i would love to reuse them as a full sheet of foam

I've always dreamed of being able to do something like that (using foam scraps to create new sheets)! Let us know if it works out, please :)

Shredding foam is an okay "while goofing off watching TV" activity but when I'm doing a lot of it, it makes my fingers sore.

I have the same heartache every time I have to empty the trash in my studio. I mean, my husband and I had it down to where we only had to take the trash to the street every two weeks (sometime more sometimes less depending on which stage of fursuit building i'm at) I really love recycling and doing what I can to keep things from the landfill. (Our systems got all messed up when we moved in with the grandparents-in-law for husband's law school, I hate it) But there's been a ton of great suggestions above, thanks for posting this journal! I will definitely start doing some of the things people have said!

Stockpile enough foam shreds, build yourself a LoveSack.

I saw a collapsible silicone wine (stemless) cup recently. New resin pot?

Silicone would be good for usage with urethane but not so much with silicone XD I like the idea of glass for silicone because I can scrub uncured silicone from glass with relative ease, so maybe two sets of cubs for different mixtues is the answer.

Linked that thing on FB from the post, but here's the shopping link.
http://www.wineenthusiast.com/silic.....et-of-2%29.asp

Resin container reuse is not recommended. Better to move to paper cups, A renewable resource. Keep them with desiccant as many resins are sensitive to moisture. Residue on second use containers and mixing sticks can cause flash cure or no cure causing trash in its toxic state that is a bigger problem.

An excellent point, but the waxed paper cups take forever to break down because the parrafin is usually a petroleum derivative, right? And I refuse to use styrofoam and REALLY want to avoid plastic. Maybe just good old fashioned dixie cups? But then size becomes an issue, I'd have to use up 8 or 10 cups where I could just use 2 larger plastic cups.

Wouldn't the best way to not waste foam be to use Cast Heads? No foam scraps from carving... Just sayin'

Casting produces almost as much waste, and more volatile waste than foam(Plus foam is recylable, casting waste isn't).

This topic has been very enlightening ^.^

I know how you feel on the allergies to uncured resins and the like, I have the same! I have a really bad reaction to ONYX where I break out in hives just from the scent of the stuff. I still love to use it even if I don't get it often v.v I swell up if the uncured stuff gets on my skin at all v.v

Foam scraps can be grafted together for tail cores too, he'll they don't even need to be glued together! I keep all my scraps of foam and fur. As you said above can be used to fill a DTD. Some fur scraps too can be used on suits eg for eyebrow spots or other such small markings.
For plastic cups and the like I put them in the recycling.
Popsicle sticks used on resin are put in normal waste because it's bonded. All my silicone mixers are metal and the containers plastic/metal so are reusable because silicone hates everything but itself!


EDIT: I might add I don't make as much as you do so that might be why I ain't overflowing in excess! I use everything and anything I can, I hoard too which I suppose helps in a way..

Yeah, any urethane product is pretty bad with me, I can manage to do small casts like a claw at a time of smooth cast if I'm SUPER careful and have the fan on, but i took that feather lite crap outside on a windy day and even then my whole torso face and farms broke out in hives and I had to go to the ER. I'd hate to think of a cat getting into the garbage and licking some of that stuff off its paw X.X I'm sure it's fatal to some animals.

I'm going to move over to glass silicone cups I think, I've got a million salsa jars I save because I'm a genius(and by that I mean I dont mind drinking out of old jars, lol)- plus I have the lids so it might help in longer projects if I have to get up i can seal in part A thats leftover or something. But the urethane waste is my biggest concern. If a cat licked silicone rubber off itself it would get sick but I doubt it would die.

Glad to hear that you're thinking about this. We're extremely environmentally aware and conscious of our impact in the world of garbage, especially working with materials that are not always easily recycled. We've designed our methods over the years to produce as little waste as possible since garbage is a drag.

We don't make body patterns with loads of duct tape/carved foam padding, instead we draft patterns on newsprint and burn rough draft patterns/scrap paper in our wood stove as kindling for starting fires.

We use spandex/polyfil pillows instead of carving foam for any body/leg padding we do.

We make our paw pads, claws, teeth, tongues, etc out of fabric materials that don't need to be cast.

We save patterns so we don't have to waste materials making new patterns every time we set out to do something. Our pattern library is extensive and extremely helpful as a place to start when diving into a new project.

We utilize methods of construction and pattern cutting that cut down on scrap waste - use every tiny bit possible! We take extra (and more difficult steps) to do our paw pads-instead of doing them from the back with a large piece of pad material we cut the pads out first and sew them on one by one to minimize on wasted material. We save small spandex scraps in a bag and use them for other small patterned things. We have a small bag of fur scraps we use for hair tufts, details and head patterns, but we only ever keep one bag of "keeper" scraps around.

We are lucky to have a local place called S.C.R.A.P. which is basically a recycle-reuse thrift store place for craft/art/creative supplies. We donate all of our fur, fabric, extra unused supplies and various material scraps there when we have enough to fill a kitchen trash bag. We also luck out and buy some materials there, too when there's good stuff to buy (foam from a company that ships refrigerated stuff with sheet upholstery foam as insulation! upholstery thread from a local wetsuit company!) There's a SCRAP in Portland and another in San Francisco, and there are other ones nationwide, it's catching on. It's a fabulous resource for getting materials and also donating your own scraps. Here's a worldwide list of them, maybe there's one near you! http://www.artofrecycle.org/our_neighbors.html

Instead of throwing your foam bits away, think about something you could make for cheap, that you could offer on craigslist or freecycle - make dog beds with recycled fabric and foam/fur scraps, sell them as upcycled dog beds, make a little money on the side rather than adding to the great American garbage pile. You can stuff tails with shredded foam, too, though it's a lil extra work and they aren't quite as squishy as polyfil. You could try listing fur and foam scraps for free on craigslist, people come up with ideas for all kinds of materials, it could be total treasure to someone- and it'd be way better than paying for it to be taken to the landfill.


We do end up with a little garbage produced with each suit we make- some plastic shavings from eyes, a small bag of foam scraps from carving a head, bits of felt/etc leftover from details on a head, duct tape dummy patterns on the head, a few small scrap bits of fabric and thread ends. That's about it though, its usually enough to fit in a plastic shopping bag (unless theres a duct tape dummy that needs to go, but we have only had one around in the last few years). We keep a very small waste basket in our studio for space's sake, and to be aware of how much waste we generate. Just about everything else gets donated to the local scrap thrift store place and they are always super happy to get it. They turn around and sell our fur scraps for .75 for a small piece and 1.50 for a big piece.

Recycle packing/shipping materials- cardboard boxes can be reused and shipped with til they're done for, and then recycled.

I'd suggest using paper cups instead of plastic ones...

That's all I can think of currently! Cheers!! --A at wild-life

buy supplies from the thrift store when you see them! bias tape, zippers, fabric, polyfil, foam sheets (new, packing supplies from boeing), i've used all of those things! just don't buy thrift store thread because it's usually super old and snaps way too easy :(

If I know I am going to be doing a long casting session I try to have a smaller cup for part a and part b and then a large cup for mixing both and that way I can use the smaller cups for parts a and b sepertly over and over for a few hours of casting, and will let the resin cure in the large cup and then remix in it. It works really well for things like smooth cast that cures in only a minute or two. And it cuts down on the plastic in the trash, Also if my resin in my mixing cup cures and I pull it out quick enough, sometimes I get a cast cup shape, I will use those for mixing too. It's like making more cups while your casting other things.

I think about this subject as well, and considering that foam, fake fur, hot glue, and acrylic paint are all plastics, it would seem that the fursuit "industry" is based almost entirely on petroleum products. It makes me a bit sad, and I've thought about doing an "eco friendly" fursuit before - which would most likely be more of an art project than a viable costume, because of the nature of the materials I'd be using.

In actual practice, I save foam scraps for stuffing DTD's and some tails, and I use my old Tim Hortons paper cups for casting, haha. I keep any fur scrap that's more than an inch wide, to use on future projects or sell as scraps. I like to include cleaning and maintenance instructions with all my products to help them last longer, too =)

Although, here's a question I just thought of. I used up another resin kit today, and am now left with the plastic containers for Parts A and B. These say they're recyclable, but I'm a bit concerned about the residual resin components in them... what should I do? Is there a good way to clean out this resin gunk?

Heres my techniques...

small scrap foam: in place of packing peanuts for shipping
Fur: well im new at this so I actually stitch and glue as many small pieces i can together to make one big piece "my hoofboots" LOL
Cups for resins, foams, etc...: I use the small white dixie cups untill they are unusable and i use the same stirstick all the time. It gets bigger and bigger after every use then I end up recycling it cause its covered in resin "Plastic"

One technique is to cast up a silicone cup that you can clean out all the time and you can clean out the resin and foam and not have to worry about disposing of cups. Ive actually considered doing this but havent gotten around to it.