Circle Faux Leather Earrings

These stacked circle earrings feature both faux leather and cork materials.

These circle faux leather earrings are easy to make and offer an added bonus – the cut out from the outer circle can be used for an easy 2nd earring (shown below)! This post shares how to make both sets of earrings.

And… scroll to the very bottom to see additional photos of this earring made with different materials and patterns.

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Check out my favorite diy earring essentials list on my Amazon storefront here!
Check out my favorite diy earring materials list on my Amazon storefront here!

Details for making these circle faux leather earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below.

What You’ll Need for the circle faux leather earrings :

I used the following materials for these earrings:
- Camo Cork
- Olive green faux leather
Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Cricut Transfer Tape, Strong Grip
Cricut Transfer Tape, Standard Grip
Earring wire hooks with balls – This is one style of earring hook that you can use. They’re super easy to use and won’t require jump rings or jump ring tools/pliers
- Gold Plated
- 14K Gold
- .925 Sterling Silver
- 300 piece set silver
Basic Cricut Tools
Cricut Brayer
Leather Scissors
Earring Backs
Earring Cards –
Earring supplies – earring hooks, jump rings, pliers, jump ring tool. This is the kit that I bought on Amazon and love it! It has a bundle of faux leather sheets as well as all of the tools you’ll need to make earrings.
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats. Standard Green Mats -for faux leather, cork, and HTV.
Stronggrip Purple mats – for genuine leather
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Leather hole punch – This leather punch makes much smaller holes than the one above.
Heat and Bond
Cricut Easy Press – There are a few options. All work, but I usually use a 9″ x 9″.
- 9″ x 9″ Cricut Easy Press
- Cricut Easy Press Mini
- 9″ x 9″ Cricut Easy Press Bundle, includes mat
Cricut Easy Press Mat
- 8″ x 10″ Easy Press Mat
- 12″ x 12″ Easy Press Mat
- 16″ x 20″ Easy Press Mat
Huge Cricut tools Bundle
Here is what I use to smooth my leather edges.
Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue
Plastic bags for earrings

HOW TO MAKE DIY EARRINGS

Select an earring template and upload it into Cricut Design Space.

You can find many templates for your earrings on Pinterest and Etsy. Many bloggers offer them for free and others are available for sale on the Etsy website.

For these circle faux leather earrings, I used the following SVG cut file:

GlamGirlsSVG – Assorted Earring SVGs
This SVG file is no longer available, but I found a similar file here. I love this website for SVG files!

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your circle faux leather earrings by clicking on the + icon.

making faux leather earrings on a Cricut

How to make faux leather earrings on a Cricut machine

Upload Image, if not already uploaded

Upload the cut file for this project, by clicking on the upload icon on the left and navigate to the file on your computer.

I always recommend adding tags when uploading new files. Pick word that you would type in if you were looking for the file. This makes it much easier when you’re looking for the file in the future.

Insert the cut file onto the canvas of your new project.

Click on the Images icon on the left.

Tip: To easily find my upload files, I usually filter by files that I have uploaded. Click on the Filter option.

Click on “Uploaded.”

Select the cut file you want to use. It will have a green box around it when selected. Then, click on the insert image button in lower, right-hand corner.

circle faux leather earrings svg file upload on Cricut Design Space

Once you’ve inserted the image onto the canvas, you can see the dimensions of the file you’ve inserted in the height and width field.

This is what the file for our the circle diy earrings looks like when added to the Cricut canvas. It is about 2.5″ tall.

circle faux leather earrings on cricut canvas

Re-size the diy faux leather earrings, if needed.

It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas. An earring size is a personal preference, but here are some general dimensions.

Small teardrops – 1 3/4 inches
Large teardrops – 2 1/2 inches
Medium leaf – 2 1/4 inches
Large leaf – 2 1/2 inches

You’ll want to decide the height of your earring based on personal preference.

For this project, I created an earring with a 1.8″ height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller.

Changing height on circle faux leather earrings in Cricut Design Space

Change earring components to the right color.

Changing the images to the right color keeps things clear when you’re putting different materials and colors through the cutting machine.

The earring components in this file are grouped together so you’ll need to Ungroup the image before you can change the color. To do this, click on the image and then click the Ungroup button.

Ungroup elements of an image by clicking on Ungroup in Cricut Design Space

Then click on each component and select the color you’ll be using for that component.

I made my hollow circle a black color and changed my small circle to red. These don’t actually reflect the colors used for this project. I used an olive green and a camo cork.

Decide if you want to delete the holes

Decide if you want to eliminate the holes. If you do, Ungroup the image. Then, click on one of the images and then click on the Contour button in the lower right-hand corner.

Then click the small circle button (the smallest circle represents the hole) and then click the X to close out. Repeat this step for the second earring component. Watch the video if you need more instructions for using Contour.

Duplicate images, as needed

Now it’s time to duplicate your images.

Click on each earring element and click duplicate.

duplicate circle faux leather earrings on Cricut Design Space

If you want to make the second set of earrings shown above, you’ll need a second set of the small circles. Just duplicate two more of them. That isn’t shown in my photo because I cut mine after the fact since I had the idea later.

DECIDE ABOUT EARRING BACK

The back of many faux leather and cork materials is felt or knit. Lately I’ve been ironing on black vinyl to the back of my earrings. I like that it gives it a more finished look than felt or knit. Decide if you want to cover the back of your earrings by ironing on black vinyl iron .

Another option for the backing is to cut a second set of the earrings and glue them back to back. I use two approaches to do this. One is to use a fabric glue (I use Crafters Pick). Another approach is to use Heat n Bond to attach the two earring pieces together. Check out HOW to create double sided faux leather or double sided cork in this post.

For this project, I’ll share information on how to iron on the vinyl. Watch the YouTube video linked above for details.

You’ll notice in the photo below that I cut a piece of heat transfer vinyl that was just a little bit larger than the earring components that I was cutting. Most of the time, I actually iron on a piece of vinyl the same size as the full sheet. Then, every time I use that sheet, the back is ready to go already.

I put the iron on material with the shiny side up (backing on top).

I use the Cricut Easy Press to apply the heat transfer material. I love my Easy Press.

This is what it looks like after the heat transfer vinyl is applied.

Remove the backing from the vinyl while it is still warm.

Here are some Easy Press mat options:

MAKE IT

Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut for your earring components and your material is ready, click on the Make It button to cut your circle faux leather earrings.

On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut.

cutting circle faux leather earrings on the Cricut mat in Cricut Design Space

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

Turn your dial on your Cricut Explore to Custom. This lets you look at the long list of materials. You will need to select a material for EACH mat.

Click on the Browse All Materials link to see the menu of materials options on your Cricut.

Selecting a material from the Browse all materials menu on Cricut Design Space for your Cricut machine

For this faux leather AND the cork I used the same setting – the Shimmer Leather – 1mm option.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can cut cork, faux leather, faux suede, and leather on the Cricut Explore Air and on the Cricut Maker. When cutting thin cork sheets, faux leather and faux suede, I normally use the Cricut standard fine point blade. If you’re cutting genuine leather, you’ll need to use the Cricut deep blade.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

After placing the material on the mat, I use a Cricut Brayer roller to press the faux suede or faux leather onto the mat. If you don’t have one of those you can use a dough roller.

When removing the cork from the mat, always use a spatula. If you pull up the cork you can tear you cork.

This cork cut so nicely! Perfect circles.

This is what the vinyl looks like on the back. I like it so much better than the orange-ish knit material.

My leather didn’t cut all the way through in a few places.

I used scissors to snip where it was still attached.

The line of the cut was very clear so I just needed to cut along that line.

Trim any felt or fuzz from the earrings.

Using a pair of sharp scissors, trim fuzz from around the earrings. Be very careful not to cut any of the earring, you’re only cutting the fuzz off of your faux leather earrings. I have a pair of leather scissors that I love using when working on my earrings.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

When my earrings don’t have holes, I use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy faux leather earrings. I especially like my leather punch that I got on Amazon that punches the really small holes! The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. You can also use Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through faux leather and faux suede, but it is best to go through just one layer at a time if you do this.

The outer ring is pretty narrow so be very careful. I actually had to re-do one of mine because I didn’t get my hole in the center. Ugh.

Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your diy faux leather earrings.

It doesn’t take much to put together earrings. You either need a couple of pairs of pliers or a jump ring tool and one pair of pliers. You can get the two tools below along with a full kit of earring hooks and jump rings AND sheets of faux leather in this inexpensive DIY earring kit on Amazon. It is the perfect starter set. Great for you if you’re getting started and a great gift for anyone that likes to DIY

Open the jump ring.

A jump ring isn’t closed. This means with the right tools, you can open it to put on the earring components.

These are the two tools that I use to open and close my jump rings. They’re both in this awesome starter kit.

I hold one side of the jump ring with my pliers. With my other hand, I use my jump ring tool to push one side of the jump ring back (to open). It is important not to open the jump ring by pulling them to the left and right. If you do it that way, it will be hard to close the jump ring, while keeping the shape. Instead, push the ring back/front to open the jump ring.

Note: If you’re using the jump ring tool, find the slot on the tool that is sized right for the jump ring.

Put a hook onto a jump ring for each earring.

My new best practice is to put a jump ring onto the hook and to close the jump ring. I do this before I even begin to put the earring components onto a jump ring.