FAUX LEATHER EARRING TUTORIAL

Big earrings have made their way into 2021, and let’s be honest… We all want to rock some!! Fun-shaped earrings can transform your whole outfit, I mean, accessorizing is key amiright?? I’ve heard through the grapevine that Joanna Gaines is responsible for making faux leather earrings trendy, which doesn’t surprise me given that she is the CEO of starting new trends. What is SO nice about this trend is how easy and inexpensive they are to make with the Cricut!! Keep reading to see how YOU can make these earrings at home (and snag a free earring template!!)

Materials you’ll need:

• Faux leather sheets, whatever color you want (this tutorial uses two different colors)

• Needle nose pliers

• 2 earring hooks

• 2 jump rings

• “Deep Point Blade + Housing” cutting blade for Cricut

• Cricut Standard Grip mat

• Cricut (Explore Air 2 or Maker)

• Painters tape

These are the materials you will need to make your earrings. I got these faux leather sheets along with an earring-making kit and pliers from Amazon, and they were all included in a bundle; there are a lot of options like this on Amazon, and a wide variety of colored leather sheets are available for purchase. For this tutorial, I am using the Deep Point Blade + Housing cutting blade for Cricut. This specific faux leather is thin enough to be cut with the standard blade, but I use the deep point just to be safe. Finally, I use my Cricut Maker, but you can use the Explore Air 2 for this project as well.

Step One

After you have uploaded your earring template into Design Space, load your Standard Grip mat with two colors of your choice, making sure you measure how big you want the earrings to be.

Pro tip: look at yourself in the mirror and measure underneath your earlobe how long you would like your earrings to be with a tape measure. I learned this the hard way, as the first pair I made basically touched my shoulders.

After your material is on the mat, make sure you flatten the material with a flat tool or credit card to make sure it is sticking on, otherwise the blade has a chance of getting caught and ripping your beautiful fabric. Then, outline the leather with painter’s tape, again to avoid any movement as the blade cuts the leather. (By the way, don’t worry about the tape being layered on top of the leather, the blade will still cut the material like a charm).

Step Two

Make sure when your earrings are ready to be cut, they are placed accordingly on the mat in Design Space to match your material on the physical mat. For these earrings, I cut them on the same physical mat but keep them on separate DS mats, as it will automatically separate the mats by color. You can choose to keep them one color and therefore on one mat, this is just my preference as it helps me feel a little more organized.

As you go to cut, make sure the material is set to “Faux Leather (Paper Thin),” in order for the blade to cut properly. If you have a Cricut Explore Air 2, you will need to dial to the “custom” setting on the machine, then find the faux leather option in Design Space. If you have a Maker, all you need to do is find this setting through Design Space when it prompts you to make your material selection.

Step Three

Once your design is done being cut, simply peel the leather off of the mat. In most cases, the earring pieces will stick to the mat as you lift the excess material up, which makes the “weeding” process basically nonexistent in this project. The only material that doesn’t automatically weed out is the earring hole, so you may need to poke around a little bit to get the circle to come out.

After your earring pieces are out, get two earring hooks and two jump rings and place them as shown in the picture. This is the order in which the pieces will be assembled.

To add the earring hooks and jump rings to the earrings, simply take your pliers and pry open the endings. As soon as you have made enough space to make it through the hole of the leather, go ahead and put the endings through the holes and close them with the pliers.

And there it is!!

Didn’t I tell you these would be easy?? You can literally style these with any outfit, and there are so many other templates you can use too!

Speaking of templates, did I mention you can snag this SVG I used for these earrings for FREE?? Keep scrolling to download your free earring template!

If you want to shop more earring templates, I have 9 more for sale on my Etsy shop!