Coloring faux fur?

[Griff]

So a few months back I made myself a pair of faun boots and used plain white faux fur to fur them. My plan was to use  airbrush paints to color the fur but when I tested it on a bit of scrap I decided against it. The fur got terribly crunchy and even when I brushed it out it still felt icky (and the color faded). So.. I ended up leaving them plain white.

Well now I'm planning on making full digitigrate (technically ungulate I suppose) faun legs and this time I want to have a better plan of action for coloring my fur before I go and make them.
I have a much bigger budget for this (yay for getting a job) so
I could get multiple fur colors but I'd still like to give em realistic coloring , like rather than going from light brown to dark brown abruptly, I'd like the colors to fade into each other.
So, any suggestions on how to go about this?
I've heard that Rit dye works on faux fur, I experimented using some dark blue Rit dye on some left over white fur but most the color came out when I rinsed it and I was left with an icky gray-ish blue-ish. Though, I did follow the bottles directions which may not be right when dying faux fur? I didn't find any specific tutorials on dying faux fur so I kinda just went for it.
I also know that I've heard of people airbrushing fursuits, is the icky crunchy fur inevitable or am I doing something wrong? The paints I tried where created airbrush paints. Is there a brand that works better for fur?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
~ Griff ♥

[Panda]

this post seems pretty helpful, and there's a link in there to futher posts on the subject

I'm not a fursuit maker btw, just have things like that bookmarked for costuming purposes ^^

[Oanta]

I attempted to dye my fur with sharpies and isopropyl alcohol 70%.  I ended up using a spray bottle since the stuff was already made.  However, if you have a big enough container or can plan ahead for which pieces need what colors, then you could dye them separately and it will go all the way through the fur instead of on the top.


for me, I'm new to using fur and dying fur so that's all that I tried.  I did use spray paint but like you said, it got hard and gross.  I have no other words for it. 

[Nori]

Most people use airbrushing, but of course that takes practice to get right
I've been leaning more towards dry acrylic painting (where you get the brush as dry as possible after getting some paint on it) and as long as your careful, it should come out with no clumps or mats. Probably using a pet brush or a fine toothed comb between coats should also help prevent matting and clumps.