Welcome to Mad Fox Designs

Collars & Leashes by the Mad Fox @ Mad Fox Designs

I started doing leatherwork in 1997, and when I got my first greyhound in 2005, I started making him martingale collars. They were decorative, and highly functional, and caught the attention of friends and other owners. They started begging me to make collars for their dogs, and it too quickly grew into a small business. I was making four to six collars a month, and when you consider that each one is a unique, custom, hand crafted piece of art in itself, that got to be too much for me to keep up with, and still enjoy it. Much to some people's chagrin, I scaled everything back, and I now only make a few here and there on a special order basis. This affords me the time to take special care with each collar, to reach the high level of quality that I demand from my own work. Most of my collars these days go to non-profit organizations for fund raising. I often don't ask for reimbursement for these, but very often the organizations will insist on sending me a small amount toward the materials and my time.

My collars are made of high grade tooling leather, and stitched 100% by hand, using a double-needle locking saddle stitch. The thread is heavy weight waxed nylon, to avoid corrosion from moisture, oils, and time. Designs are stitched, painted, or hand tooled into the leather. Every collar is different, most made from the design of choice of the buyer. My favorites are usually the ones that people ask me to be creative and do whatever I want with it. I enjoy seeing what I envisioned for a particular collar come to life in my hands. Below you'll see a selection of my favorite collars, to date. Very soon I will be adding photos of my round braid lanyards and leashes.

Collars in photo above: customer order, California; 2007. Top collar is stitched and painted. Bottom two are burnt designs, free hand.

Donated to Weimaraner Club of America, raffled for fundraising; 2010. Tooled, free-hand.

Customer order, New Jersey; 2009. Painted, free-hand.

Customer order, Great Britain; 2007. Tooled, free-hand.

Gifted, New Jersey; 2008. Painted, free-hand.

Gifted, Arizona; 2008. Painted, free-hand.

Customer order, West Virginia; 2007. Beaded.