About Me

My name is Lea Mai Nguyen (with an accent on the e, because I'm French, but american keyboards don't have accents - it's funny that you can get any accent you want on a smart phone, but not on a full-sized keyboard). I started working with leather in the summer of 2013, when my father-in-law passed his leather tools on to me. He showed me how to use them, and I mostly made bracelets, belt buckles, small leather experiments. I liked it enough that I quit my Art Director job of 20 years in video games and wanted to do it full time.
But I became restless after a few months. I wasn't being creative enough.

I had taken a bird taxidermy class a few years ago at Paxton Gate in San Francisco, and I wanted to try and make little leather armors for mice, roman or fantasy, now that I knew how to shape leather and tool it.
It quickly evolved into full on steam punk style instead, when I came upon a lot of really thin, bone-white leather that I could dye and make tiny clothes with.

I make everything by hand. I design the patterns for the different elements (hats, coats, dresses), and figure out how to make the accessories that I want. The goggles are clear epoxy poured into a ring of leather, trowels are pounded from thick, soft metal wire. I sew and glue and solder. I use leather, metal, recycled electronics, fabric, jewelry findings, and frame mouldings for the pedestals. The bags open, and I usually slip a tiny treasure inside. See my Making Of here.
Because of the process, every mouse, even within the same collection, is a little different. The face, the pose, the colors, the details of the clothes and accessories, they each have their own personality.

After the first prototype, I make four more, so that each costume line consists of five mice. They're individually named, numbered and signed. The last name of each series indicates the type of costume, and there's male and female version for each line.

Le Heart on Facebook
Le Heart on Instagram (leheartdesign)

You can contact me at leheartdesign@gmail.com.

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About the mice

A lot of people are curious, sometimes concerned, about the origin of the mice.

I don't kill them, I buy bags of frozen feeder mice online, the ones intended for snake consumption. The online vendor claims they're killed humanely, which of course I have no way of verifying, but they have no visible injuries and since they're intended as pet food, I assume they're not poisoned. 
I donate the bodies to my friend Alexandra, whose daughter rescues raptor birds. So the mouse meat ends up as food, as intended.

I will never make freak experiments like two headed mice and mutant animals. I pose and treat the mice with respect and dignity. I try to make them look as cute and lively as possible. 

If you still have objections to mouse taxidermy, I will add that in nature, mice are prey. They rarely get the luxury of dying of old age. I just give their body a nice afterlife...

Wait a minute... If you object to taxidermy, what are you doing here reading this??