DIY Faux Suede Earrings

These faux suede leaves are perfect for Fall earrings!

My newest DIY earrings feature material that I don’t work with quite as often, faux suede. It is the perfect material for Fall accessories. And I’ve always had great luck working with the Cricut faux suede.

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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!

What You’ll Need:

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Faux suede from Cricut
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 Mats – You need new or very sticky Cricut mats. The green mats work fine for this project because we’re using faux leather.

YouTube Video available

Watch the YouTube video below if you want to see how any part of the diy faux leather earrings project is done. I’m not going to write all of the steps for doing the work on Cricut in this post because those are in the video. Instead, I’ll share highlights about the project.

STEPS TO CREATE 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.

I used an SVG cut file that I bought as part of a SVG earring bundle on etsy at SVG Cuttables . It’s part of a bundle that I had to buy because I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE so many of these earring designs. You’ll see me post many projects from this bundle in the weeks ahead.

Pick your materials/colors.

I love the Cricut faux suede pack! The colors are perfect for Fall. I used the burgundy color and black as they will match so many of my Fall outfits. This faux suede cuts so well on the Cricut machine because the setting is customized to this exact product.

Start a new project in Cricut Design Space.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project.

Insert the earring cut file image.

Upload the cut file for this project.

I always recommend adding tags when uploading new files. If you think you’ll make a lot of earrings, add tags like “earrings” and “leaf.” This will make it much easier when you’re looking for the file in the future.

Insert the cut file onto the canvas of your new project. Tip: to easily find my upload files, I usually filter by uploads.

Re-size the earrings, if needed.

It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas. However, this file is already set with the dimensions I like, so there wasn’t any need to re-size these earrings.

Change earring components to the right color.

This will help keep things clear when your putting different colors of leather through the cutting machine. My front piece (with the leaf cut-out) will be burgundy and the back piece will be black.

MAKE IT

Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut, click on the Make It button.

On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut, one for each color of faux suede in your project.

Mirror your design, if necessary

If your design isn’t symmetrical (same on both the left and right sides) you will probably want turn the mirror setting on if the good side of the faux suede is face down on the mat. That is an easy click on the mirror button for each mat you need to mirror. I don’t need to mirror this design.

Make sure you have the machine on the right material setting.

Turn your dial to custom.

Select the right material from the materials menu in Cricut Design studio.

When you’re using Cricut brand faux suede, this step is always easy because the settings are standardized and always work well for Cricut products. When using other brands of earring materials (like Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon) it sometimes requires you to play around to get the setting right. This is sometimes frustrating. When I share my projects I’ll always share the settings that I learn work with the materials I am using for that project. Hopefully this will save time and wasted leather material for you.

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

Move the 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.

Push the wheels to the right. They may be on there tight so put some strength behind it.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can print faux leather, faux suede, and leather on the Cricut Explore. When cutting Cricut’s 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.

Since this project uses faux suede, you won’t need to change your blade (if you’re currently using the normal fine point blade).

Place the material on the cutting mat.

Before you put the faux suede on the mat, you’ll want to look at the back of it to determine what is is made of. The back of this suede is felt. This means that it will leave a mess of fuzz when you take it off of your mat if you place it on the mat right side up. For this reason, I placed my faux suede on my mats good side down (when they have a felt back).

Also, I like to determine how much of the suede will be cut. Typically, it is less than 3″ of material, meaning only about 3″ of the mat needs to be exposed. I then place my plastic mat cover back onto my mat about 3″ down from the top of the cutting area. I do this so that I don’t put the suede or leather 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 leather/suede because I want minimize waste of the material.

Once I place my plastic on top of the mat, I put the suede onto the mat.

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

Continue placing the leather onto each mat and cutting the faux leather with the Cricut machine.

Glue earrings together, if necessary.

As I mentioned earlier, the back of some faux leather and faux suede earrings aren’t very attractive. I often cut an extra faux leather or 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 felt isn’t exposed. To do this, I glue two earrings together using E6000 glue. You can also use a glue gun if you’d prefer.

For this project I only glued pieces to the back of my black earrings. This created a great look on the back of my earrings in case they turn or show.

Trim any felt, fuzz, or glue from the earrings.

Using a pair of sharp scissors, trim fuzz from around the earrings.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

I normally use a leather punch to put the holes in my earrings when the cut file doesn’t already have a hole. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. Since the leaf on this earring has such narrow lines at the top, I decided to use my Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through the faux suede.

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