Useful Tutorials

Fur / Fabric Suppliers

Stores for patterns, parts, and more

FREE Resources!

Scam Prevention

📼 Video tutorials and Youtube Channels we like!

🧵 Fur Suppliers & Color Matching

Useful tools

Fabric Shops

Keep in mind, our community CANNOT act as customer service reps for these companies, so if you have an issue with a supplier, please communicate with them.

🛒 Reputable Patterns and Parts Shops

🆓 FREE Resources! 🪽

A note about affordability & fursuitmaking.Fursuitmaking (the modern standard of quality, anyway) is an inherently expensive hobby/job/project to get into.There are definitely ways to stretch a budget, but keep in mind, there are only so many ways to reduce cost without significantly sacrificing on comfort, quality, and longevity of your fursuit/costume. Also consider, the fine folks around us who choose to sell their patterns, parts, files, and other efforts are just trying to survive like you and me.We're extremely lucky we have a few free things here and there!

🪙 SCAM PREVENTION

  • 💵 Avoid using Cashapp, or Venmo/PayPal "friends & family" option when at all possible. It is not always a bad sign for sellers or commission artists to accept these payment methods, but it is much safer for you as a buyer to use a payment method which has protections in place for a buyer. No payment method is perfect, however, it is risky to pay someone using these, because these are intended to send money as a gift to someone you know and trust. A better choice would be to select the "goods & services" option.

  • 💳 Know when to open a dispute or file a chargeback. Sometimes, you may be left in the dust with nothing to show for your purchase. When buying parts, fabrics, and other materials online, be sure to review the site you're buying from to make sure it's reputable first of all. If even, after all that, you get no materials in return for your money, it's worth it to open a dispute with the website (such as aliexpress, etsy, etc) or file a chargeback on your credit card (or with your bank) to get your money back if you got scammed by someone shady.

  • 🫀 Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, such as the details of the deal, the wording or 'vibes' a buyer/seller is giving off, or if the deal seems too good to be true, then listen to the little voice in your head saying to hold off or to decline the deal.

  • 🐕 Ask for or look for proof of ownership of the item or artwork. If you are commissioning artwork, make sure the artist has an established social media account (or multiple) with consistency between their art posts. If their posts look like traced clipart, have no signatures, or may look like they have AI generated details within them, cease communicating with the artist immediately. You can also ask for current projects/WIPs as well as layers of the artwork if you are suspicious and need proof of the art examples actually belonging to them. If buying items, you can ask the seller to take a photo with the item- either with a specific number of fingers held in front of it/touching it, or with a piece of paper which states their username and the current date. These are ways you can sus out scammers- they are a good help but keep in mind they are not 100% fool proof. With the use of generative AI on the rise, it is especially being used to fake proof for scammers, so be vigilant. Google's SynthID can detect some AI generated stuff, but not all (as not every AI generated image uses SynthID).

  • 🔍 Make frequent use of reverse image search tools. If you are suspicious of someone's portfolio or examples, try plugging in some of their images into several different reverse image search engines to see if you can find the images popping up on other creators' pages. If they do show up on other artists' pages, that may be a red flag.

  • 🔤 Watch out for broken/poor grammar & pushy attitude. Bad grammar is not always an indicator of a scam. There are many fursuit makers worldwide who do not speak English, or whose first language is not English. That being said, it is always a good idea to be extra careful if you notice someone's language sounding strange or 'broken'- as scamming organizations unfortunately recruit non-native English speakers to do this type of scam work quite often, it is common to see broken English in scamming.

  • 🚩 Pushy attitudes from sellers is a red flag. Scammers will simply try to get you to agree to give them money as quick as possible- usually just agreeing to do whatever it is you request, no matter how daunting or crazy the project is, whatever gets your money into their hands asap. Scammers are far more willing to "haggle" and get you to pay low (and suspicious) prices, because they do not intend to deliver any finished quality product (therefore, they will take ANY amount of money). They may often also message you repeatedly to 'annoy' you into responding. Genuine sellers may also sometimes pester you, but it is far less common.