DIY Faux Fur Grass Mat!

Lately, I’ve been seeing faux fur mats everywhere, and I’ve decided it’s time to make one myself to replace my creased and worn-out flocked MKP mat. 

 

Faux fur mats offer several advantages that really appeal to me. For starters, they’re flexible and can conform to the shape of whatever’s beneath them. That means creating hills no longer requires painting and flocking foam shapes—you can just stack some books under the mat to form natural-looking terrain that perfectly matches your setup, because it is part of your mat.

On top of that, faux fur mats are durable, lightweight, and easy to transport. You can fold them tightly and toss them in a bag without worrying about creasing, bending, or losing flock. Since they fold up so compactly, they also take up way less storage space than foam boards or rolled mats.

So, join me as I attempt to complete not one, but three faux fur mats.

I began by ordering a sample piece of the fur fabric. I wanted to test the technique and determine which colors to use. I eventually settled on the left and middle colors from my test swatches. It seems when using brown fur as the base, the brown will darken up lighter paint colors you use, so I'd advise using light greens and olive colors instead of dark greens.

 

Once satisfied with the color, I ordered full-sized mats in the dimensions I needed and jumped into the most time-consuming part of the process: trimming the fur.

 

To be honest, I found the trimming surprisingly relaxing. I threw on a podcast and spent the next 6–7 hours cutting the fur down to a length suitable for wargaming.

If possible, try to find a faux fur fabric with short hairs—ideally around one inch. That’ll save you a ton of trimming time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a short-pile mat in the exact size and color I wanted. But if you come across one, please send me the link!

 

With trimming done, it was time to paint. I squeezed out a good amount of  green tones and started brushing the paint through the fur using a pet fur brush. The key here is to keep the brush moving constantly to prevent the paint from drying and clumping the fur.

This part went much faster than trimming—only about 2–3 hours—but still required a lot of elbow grease to get done as you move your arm back and forth repetitively brushing the paint into the fur,

And that’s it! One 5.33 ft x 9 ft mat completed—two more to go. The first mat took about 9-10 hours but I imagine with practice I can shorten that a little my second time around. Also keep in mind that I had to do this on the floor of my room, it would probably be a lot faster if you had a big table and some table clamps to keep the mat still. 

Thanks for following along, and until next time!