When I was a Boy Scout, we made fur hats out of self tanned, self trapped fur, and what we did was make a hat out of the brown paper found in grocery bags. we kept on cutting and pasting until we got it right, and then we cut and laced the fur. You should be able to do that too. Brown paper is a lot cheaper than fur.

To really be sure, you could go from brown paper to cheap canvas then to the fur.

Good luck.