"Cotton poofs for smoke and gas? " Topic

I'm looking to get something in the order of cotton poofs to represent poison gas clouds, and I'm wondering what other people are using. I think part of the problem is that I just can't figure out the right terms, so my searches are not turning up the right sort of thing.

What I'm looking for is pre-colored loose cotton or synthetic poofs that I can pull apart and tease into big, loose irregular clouds. The key is that it needs to be pre-colored, as I don't want to have to do that myself. I'm particularly looking for a good sickly yellow color, but I can work with what's available and maybe mix a couple different colors.

Any recommendations? Your help is appreciated!

I did a search for colored cotton balls and found these

link

There were also a bunch of articles on coloring your own

That Joanne's link isn't great. The price is better at Office Depot

link

I glue cotton balls to washers.
My usual washer method is to stretch electric tape across the washer to make a tight seal across the hole.
Fill the hole with 5 minute epoxy, and push the cotton ball into it. When set, tease the ball out.
Spray paint lightly with orange as a first coat then spray with cheap Flat Black.

I use white polyester batting.

It takes paint very well, so you can, e.g., make black smoke with yellow and orange for explosions and fires, or pink or purple smoke to mark a LZ, or whatever you need.

Just work the paint into the polyester with your fingers. Wear latex or nitrile gloves if you like.

You can also leave it white for fog or white smoke.

The smallest bag that Joann's sells is way too big for our needs. I don't think that I would use up half a bag in my lifetime. However, you can buy much smaller bags during the Halloween season, when polyester batting is sold as spider webs.

FWIW I managed to find black polyester batting after a lot of Internet searching, so I can confirm it is manufactured and sold somewhere.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find gray or tan batting, so I had to turn to alternate sources for gray smoke and dust clouds. I discovered that you can tease any color of felt into very ephemeral-looking clouds of loose floofy stuff with a wire brush. The color of the felt lightens up considerably when you do this, so I found that to make clouds of tan dust I had to start with an unexpectedly deep tan color of felt. To get a sickly yellow cloud of gas I might start with a sort of golden yellow or very yellowish desert tan.

- Ix

I have hamster bedding in various colours, for phosgene I use a rather lurid green (it was called green gas after all!).

I've used light brown carded wool for desert dust clouds and it's available in all sorts of colours…

I appreciate all the recommendations guys. Gives me plenty to go on.

Best option is to make your own.

I use steel wool for smoke:

More pics here on Super Galactic Dreadnought: link