Disney Inspired Faux Leather Earrings

Make these Disney Minnie Mouse inspired earrings to show your love for this special mouse.

These Disney inspired faux leather earrings can be created in so many different styles. They’re super easy to make by cutting the leather on your Cricut machine. You can easily cut all of these materials on your Cricut Explore Air or Cricut Maker. Cut the faux leather materials and add earring hooks and you’re ready to go. I’ll share several different Disney inspired faux leather earrings projects in this blog post.

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

Disney Inspired Faux Leather Earrings YouTube Video Available

Details for making these Disney inspired faux leather earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below. This blog post doesn’t include the Cricut Design Studio tips, so be sure to watch the video for those steps (and other key tips).

My Favorite Cricut Machine Options

Cricut Maker 4 Smart Cutting Machine

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Cricut Explore 4 - Smart Cutting Machine

$198.51

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Cutting Tool and Accessory Essentials

Must Have Earring Tools

Must-Have Earring Findings

Silicone Earring Backs

$3.99

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Earring Display Cards with Backs and Bags

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Heat Press Essentials

Heat Transfer Vinyl

I used to only purchase Cricut brand HTV; however, the colors are very limited. I know enjoy the large range of HTV colors available on Amazon. Check them out here.

Example Disney Inspired Faux Leather Earring Projects

Red and white polka dot faux leather
Black faux leather

Materials Cricut Settings

See notes above under each project photo to see what I chose for my material setting.

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

If I’m using Cricut faux leather, I always select the Cricut faux leather option from the Browse materials menu when I’m cutting a single layer of faux leather.

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

If I’m using non-Cricut faux leather, the Shimmer Leather option normally works best. This is also the setting I often use when I’ve used Heat N Bond to glue two layers of Cricut faux leather together before I make a cut.

I normally use the genuine leather setting when I cut genuine leather. I also use the genuine leather setting when I use Heat n Bond to adhere two thicker pieces of faux leather together before I make my cuts.

Star Wheels

The Cricut machine has star wheels to keep materials from shifting during cutting. However, when cutting thicker materials, the star wheels can leave track marks. When you select a material from the browse menu that is thicker, the Cricut machine will prompt you to move the star wheels to the right. Be sure to move the star wheels when cutting genuine leather so that you don’t get track marks on your genuine leather.

Cricut Blade

Make sure you are using the right blade.

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

Placing material on the cutting mat(s)

The approach you use to place the material on your mat plays a big role in your Disney faux leather earrings cutting success.

How to get the material to stick to mat?

Using an extremely sticky mat is one of the most important keys to get a good cut in the material. Some people attach the material to the mat with tape. I’m not a big fan of this because while it keeps the leather down on the edges, this approach doesn’t help the hold on other parts of the leather.

My favorite approach is to use transfer tape on my mat. This approach keeps my mat clean and it also holds the material down really well because it’s super sticky.

I use strong grip for more challenging cuts and regular grip for other cuts. And sometimes I even use contact paper from the Dollar Tree. It’s not very strong so I only use it on materials without stretch and cuts that don’t have center cut outs.

I find that the center cutouts create a lot of pull on the material and I need something strong holding the material on my mat during the cut.

Placing transfer tape onto a Cricut mat for cutting diy earrings

Faux Leather face down or face up?

My answer: it depends.

I used to always face my materials with the good side facing down. But a lot has changed for me over the years, and more specifically recently as I’ve begun to cut more printed and soft textured leathers.

There is nothing worse than buying a beautiful printed leather and pulling it up from your mat to find that some of the print has pulled off. For this reason, I’ve begun to place these items onto my mat with the good side facing up. But beware, if you don’t have transfer tape on your mat you will leave a BIG mess behind.

I put this faux leather onto the mat with the good side facing down. It didn’t have a printed design on the front and it wasn’t really textured so it seemed (and was) safe to cut good side down.

Placing black faux leather onto the Cricut mat

Using a Cricut Brayer

After placing the material on the mat, I always use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto your mat. Again, getting a good stick of the leather onto the mat is SUPER important for a good cut.

using Cricut brayer to press faux leather onto the Cricut mat

Making Earrings Two Sided

As I mentioned earlier, the back of some faux leather and faux suede earrings aren’t very attractive because they are often a funny color of canvas or felt. I often cut an extra faux leather or faux suede piece for the back of the earring and I glue a second piece to the back of it. This way if the earring turns, the funny color of the felt or canvas isn’t exposed.

There are two approaches I take to do this.

Sometimes I cute extra earrings and then glue them back to back. To do this, I glue two earrings together using either Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or Aleene’s Fabric Glue.
I glue two pieces of faux leather or cork sheets together using Heat n Bond BEFORE I cut the leather. This is my new FAVORITE way to work. By gluing them together before I cut, my cuts are beautiful and it saves me a ton of time. See my video above for this project to see how easy this is to do and how I do it.

Directions for making double-sided faux leather

Place the faux leather on a Easy Press mat, with the good side facing down.

Placing faux leather onto Cricut EAsy Press mat

Cut a piece of Heat n Bond the same size as the piece of faux leather.

Place the piece of Heat n Bond onto the back of your faux leather or cork material, with the textured side facing the back side of the leather. the textured side is the side with the adhesive so you want it directly facing your material.

Placing heat n bond onto back of faux leather for diy leather earrings

Place your Cricut Easy Press (or iron) on the Heat n Bond for about 10 seconds. Mine isn’t big enough to cover the whole piece of material so I move it around every 10 seconds to another spot. This is heating the adhesive and causing it to bond to the back of the faux leather or cork.

Cricut EAsy Press applying Heat n Bond onto the faux leather

I then like to fold the piece of faux leather, unless I have an additional full faux leather sheet that I plan to bond to the back of it.

make faux leather two sided with Heat n Bond and a Cricut Easy Press

Cut the faux leather sheet in half.

Place the two pieces of faux leather together so that the adhesive sides face each other. Line them up so they’re the same size all the way around.

Place the faux leather onto the Cricut Easy Press mat.

Place something on top of the faux leather to protect it, before placing the Easy Press on it. I usually use parchment paper.

parchment paper on faux leather earrings before the Cricut Easy Press is placed on

Place the Cricut Easy Press on the faux leather for about 10 seconds, moving it around so that every section is covered for about 10 seconds.

I’m never perfect so I end up trimming around the edges to ensure edges line up.

Make the Cuts.

Once your faux leather has cooled off (about 10 minutes), I put it on my mat and begin my cuts.

cutting double sided leather in the cricut machine

Before ejecting my mat, I check to make sure I got a good cut.

I love it because I no longer have to glue to pieces together. They’re perfectly lined up and the edges look so good. Sometimes, the cut may not be perfect and my cut a bit out of the bottom layer. I just trim those along the back layer and they look good. And every once and a while, there is a torn back layer that I can’t salvage. I’ve learned that double layer seems to cut better on the genuine leather setting (even when it is faux leather). That may not be true for everyone, but it seems to work better for me.

I love how this black faux leather cuts! It is so great!

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 leather earrings.

You can also smooth the earring by using a burnishing agent. I apply it with a toothpick along the edges. It’s great because it smooths the leather and helps better define the edges.

ready to put hooks on the diy disney leather earrings

Place a hole in the top of the earrings.

I use a leather punch to put the holes in my DIY leather earrings. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time and punches larger holes (2mm is the smallest).

leather hole punch for diy faux leather earrings

Decide which type of hooks you’ll use.

The basic fish hook earrings below are easy to work with. These are my favorite choice for pinched leather earrings.

French hooks with balls are also easy to work with. You don’t need pliers or jump ring tools to work with these hooks. There are links to various colors at the top of this post. A photo of the French hooks with balls is shown below.

Working with Earrings Hooks

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 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.

Beginner Jewelry Making Supplies

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The jump ring tool and pliers below come in the kit linked above.

Open the hook

Take a close look at the loop closure at the bottom of the hook and figure out which side is the side that isn’t connected. You may need to lift the ball to see where the opening is.

Place pliers on one side of the bottom wire.

Then place another pair of pliers on the other side of it (the round circle at the bottom of the hook). Don’t place the pliers on the hook above the circle part.

two sets of pliers, one on each side of earring hook

Turn the pliers that is on the side of the circle that isn’t connected to open the loop so that you can put the earring onto the hook.

Open your jump ring.

Once your hook is open a jump ring will fit right onto it. Or, if you’d prefer not to open the hook on your hook, you can skip that part and just open the jump ring and put that onto your hook.

A jump ring is a metal ring where the ends meet but are not welded together. This means that with the right tools, you can open it and use it to connect earring components.

When using jump rings, you must first decide which size of jump rings you want to use. When selecting a jump ring size, consider the impact it will have to the length of your earring hang. In addition, if you’re putting leather and other components into a jump ring consider the thickness of the material. Thicker materials may require a larger size jump ring. I typically use 4mm and 6mm jump rings.

You’ll need to open the jump ring. These are the two tools that I often use to open and close my jump rings.

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.