Cork Earrings DIY

You’ve tried faux leather earrings, now it’s time to try cork!

I love cork earrings! In this cork earrings DIY you’ll see how easy it is to make cork earrings with a Cricut Explore. You’ll use the same fine tip blade that is normally in the Cricut machine and your regular green mat. It’s fun and easy.

Check out my earring Cork Earrings DIY tutorial on my You Tube video below!

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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!

Cork Earrings DIY General Supplies:

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
I used the following cork sheets for this project:
- Baby Cheetah Cork
- Tigers Cork
- See my other favorite corks in my Cork Sheet Haul blog post
Black iron on vinyl (optional) for the back of the cork
Earring Hooks – I used these from Hobby Lobby.
If you want to use regular hooks and jump rings, here is a great kit of basic 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 Cricut mats. The green mats work fine for this project because we’re using faux leather.
Cricut Easy Press – There are a few options. All work, but I usually use a 9″ x 9″.
Cricut Easy Press Mat
Basic Cricut Tools
Leather hole punch

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.

This is a cut file that was part of a bundle that I use a lot. I bought it at the etsy glamgirlssvg shop. If you’ve seen my other blog posts, you’ve seen me use other cut files in the bundle.

Prepare back of cork material.

This step is optional!. Turn over your cork and decide if you like the material, assuming it will show when the earring moves. I decided to cover the back of my earring Cricut black heat transfer material. I’m making a full sheet of these earrings so I am ironing this heat transfer material on the entire back of my cork before I cut it.

Heat Transfer Materials (Iron On)

First, I cut a piece of heat transfer vinyl the same size as the piece of my cork.

iron everyday heat transfer material onto the back of a cork sheet with a Cricut Easy Press

The shinny side of iron-on material should face up when you apply the heat.

Cricut Easy Press

I use a Cricut Easy Press to iron on materials. Before owning an Easy Press, I used an iron. It works, but the easy press just does a much better job and it is easy to control the temperature. I love, love, love mine. For Christmas I want to get the mini one! Here are some Cricut Easy Press options.

Pre-heat the Cricut Easy Press

When you’re ready to use your Cricut, turn it on and set the temperature.

Cricut provides a guide with your easy press, but I always just look it up online whenever I’m doing a project. You can just google search “cricut easy press heat guide.”

Tap on the type of Cricut Easy Press that you’re using. Then select the heat transfer material you are using. Then select the type of base material you’re using (what you’re ironing onto). And finally, select whether you’re using the Cricut Easy Press mat or a towel.

After tapping “Apply” it lets you know the temperature setting for the project. It also shares how long you should keep the press on your project and it tells you whether to remove the transfer material while it is warm or cool.

Here are some Cricut Easy Press mat options from Amazon.

For this project, the heat guide recommended 340 degrees for 30 seconds.

Once the Cricut Easy Press has heated up, put it on top of the material (remember, shiny side up). I put a piece a parchment paper between the Easy press mat and my cork because I don’t want the ink on the cork to transfer into my Easy Press mat.

My Easy Press isn’t big enough to cover the full piece of cork so I need to lift it and set it down on the other half for 30 seconds.

Once you remove your Easy Press from the cork and let it cool enough to touch, peel the backing from the heat transfer material.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your cork earrings DIY project by clicking on the + icon.

Start a new project in Cricut Design Space

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.

Cork earrings diy project on Cricut Explore

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 your canvas will look like once you’ve inserted it the image.

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’m going to create earrings with a 2.4″ height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller. Note: I’m making mine this size because it allows me to fit two rows of earrings onto my sheet of cork.

Remove the hole from the earring.

For these earrings, I prefer to punch my own hole. With vinyl on the back, I don’t trust my cork holes to cut clean. For this reason, I need to hide the earring holes that are part of this template.

Click on the teardrop earring image and then click on the Contour button in the lower right hand corner. It won’t appear if you haven’t clicked on the image.

Click on the circle, making it shaded as shown below.

Once it’s shaded, click the X in the upper right hand corner. When you return to the mat, you’ll see that this action has hidden the hole in the earring.

Duplicate the earring.

Click the teardrop and then click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.

MAKE IT

You’re now ready to cut the earrings for this cork earrings DIY project. Click the Make It button in the upper right-hand corner.

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

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

Turn your dial on your Cricut Explore to Custom.

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

Making snowman faux leather earrings on the cricut machine

For this cork project, I’m choosing an option from the Leather menu. I’m selecting the Shimmer Leather option. My cork is less than 1mm.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can cut thin cork sheets on the Cricut Explore. When cutting a thin piece of cork, you can use the Cricut standard fine point blade.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

I put my cork on the mat with the good side down and the iron on material facing up.

Also, I like to determine how much of the material will be cut. Typically, I place my plastic Cricut mat cover back onto my mat covering the area that I’m not cutting. I do this so that I don’t put material on top of the mat where I’m not cutting it. This keeps me from losing the stickiness on my mat. I don’t like to pre-cut my material because I want minimize waste of the material.

making diy faux leather earrings in Cricut Design Space

Once I place my plastic on top of the mat, I put the material onto the mat, face down (good side down).

How to make cork earrings on a Cricut Explore

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

Cut the Cork

Be careful when you remove the cork earrings from the mat. Use a spatula (link to Cricut tools is at top of the post). You want to make sure you’re not pulling the cork earring up as you may tear the earrings.

Trim any felt, fuzz, or glue 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 cork earrings.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

I use a leather punch to put the holes in my earrings. I like to put one on top of the other to ensure the holes are in the same spot on both earrings. 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 the earrings, but it is best to go through just one layer at a time if you do this.

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

I used different earring hooks for this project than I normally use. I didn’t use earring hooks with jump rings. For reference, here are the ones I purchased from Hobby Lobby. They’re a bit more expensive than the ones I normally use, but I love them for this project.

And that’s it! This cork earrings DIY project is complete.

If you enjoy making diy earrings, check out my other posts below.

Everyday Earrings DIY

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Stacked Football earrings
Chiefs Football Teardrop Earrings
Chiefs Heart Teardrop Earrings
Chiefs Arrowhead Earrings
Chiefs Arrowhead on Teardrop Earrings

My Favorite Leather

My Favorite Faux Leather

Valentine’s Day Earrings

St. Patrick’s Day Earrings

Winter-Themed Earrings DIY

Christmas -Themed Earrings DIY