DIY Fringe Leather Earrings

Fringe earrings are so trendy right now and they’re easy to make on the Cricut machine.

These DIY fringe leather earrings were created with genuine leather, cut with a Cricut Explore. You can cut genuine leather, faux leather, and cork sheets with a Cricut Explore, Cricut Air 2, and Cricut Maker. It’s super easy to do and it’s so fun! Pick the material you love (cork, faux leather, real leather), find the colors and patterns you want, and decide how big you want them. It’s that simple.

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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 diy fringe leather earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below.

What I used to make these diy fringe leather earrings:

Leather Scrap Kit – This kit contains a lot of great genuine leather scraps that you can use to make earrings. I got my leather with snakeskin scrap in this kit.
Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
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.
Earring wire hooks with balls – These aren’t the type I used for this project, but I’m including them here since some prefer them. These don’t require jump rings or jump ring tools/pliers.
- Gold Plated
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
Basic Cricut Tools
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Leather hole punch – This leather punch makes much smaller holes than the one above.
Here is what I use to smooth my leather edges.
Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or E6000 glue (if you’re using faux leather or cork and gluing pieces back to back)
Earring Backs
Earring Cards – I use these because they are tall enough that my earrings can fully hang while in the jewelry bags. If your earrings hang longer than your cards, they will not look as good when you put them into the plastic bags.
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 Design Bundles, Pinterest and Etsy. Many bloggers offer them for free and others are available for sale on the Etsy website.

For these diy fringe leather earrings, I used this great fringe earring bundle, which includes many variations of shapes and fringe.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your diy fringe leather earrings 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 words that you would type in if you were looking for the file. This makes it much easier to search for the file when you’re looking for it 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.

Making fringe leather earrings in 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 diy fringe leather earrings look like when the image is added to the canvas. They’re over 6″ tall.

Re-size the diy faux leather earrings.

It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas. An earring size is a personal preference, so decide the desired height and input it into the H field.

For this project, I’m going to create an earring with a 2.5 inch height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller.

Duplicate images, as needed

Now it’s time to duplicate your image. Select the fringe earring and then click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.

Decide if you like the look of the back of your earring material and if you think it will show when the earrings are worn. I often cut a second set of the earrings for the back earrings and glue them back to back to cover any felt. If you want to do so, click on the earring and then click on Duplicate to make copies as needed.

For this project, I am not going to cut two additional earrings. I think the back of the leather is pretty.

MAKE IT

Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut for your earring components, click on the Make It button to cut your diy fringe leather earrings.

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.

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

I’m using genuine leather for this project so I selected Genuine Leather from the materials menu.

For your faux leather, if it is Cricut faux leather, you’ll select the Cricut faux leather option from the Browse materials menu.

If you’re using non-Cricut brand of faux leather, the Shimmer Leather option normally works best.

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 cut faux leather, faux suede, cork, and leather on the Cricut Explore 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.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

Before you put the material on the mat, you’ll want to look at the back of it to determine what is is made of. I normally place my material on my mats good side down.

genuine leather with snakeskin design for diy leather earrings

placing leather onto Cricut strong grip mat, good side facing down

After placing the material on the mat, you can use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto your mat.

using a Cricut brayer to press leather onto the Cricut mat before cutting the leather earrings diy project

Cut the earring components with the Cricut machine.

cutting leather earrings diy project on the Cricut Explore

cutting fringe leaf leather earrings on Cricut Explore

Glue earring pieces together, if necessary.

As I mentioned earlier, the back of some faux leather and faux suede earrings aren’t very attractive because they are often 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 felt or canvas isn’t exposed.

For this project, I used genuine leather and I am not gluing a second piece to the back of each earring. However, I’ve included some pictures below in case you’ve decided to do so.

To do this, I glue two earrings together using either Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or E6000 glue.

Here are a couple pictures from another project.

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 this burnishing agent if you feel like you have too many leather flyaways. I apply it with a tooth pick along the edges. It’s great because it smooths the leather and helps better define the edges. I did not need to use it with the leather I chose for this project.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

I use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy faux leather earrings. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. Here is an option for a smaller hole leather punch.

leather hole punch to use for making faux leather earrings and leather earrings diy

placing a hole punch in a diy leather earring with a leather hole puncher

Decide which type of hooks you’ll use.

The basic fish hook earrings below are easy to work with. You can place an earring component directly into the circle on the bottom of the hook or your can use jump rings to dangle your earring components from your hook.

These French hooks with balls are also easy to work with. You don’t need pliers or jump ring tools to work with these hooks.

holding earring hook, ready to put the faux leather statement earring on

Hook Tools

It doesn’t take much to put together the first type of 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 and a great gift for anyone that likes to DIY.

Decide if you’ll use jump rings on the fish hook.

If you only have a single layer in your earring or you have a couple of earrings, you can chose to put the earring component right onto the opening at the bottom of the hook. If your components are too thick or you’d simply prefer to have more of a dangle, you can use jump rings. I’ll start by showing you how to put the earring components directly onto the hook.

If you want to put your earring directly on the the bottom of the hook, take a close look at it and figure out which side is the side that isn’t connected.

Place some 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.

putting the leather earring onto the earring hook

Using Jump Rings

I didn’t use jump rings for this project (as shown above). But if you want to get a bit more dangle, you might want to use jump rings.

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

If you want to add jump rings, first decide which size of jump rings you want to use. A 4mm jump ring is good if you only have one item or a couple of thin items. A 6mm hold a bit thicker material. Gather up a couple of jump rings in the size you need.

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.

I like to start by putting a jump ring onto the hook and then close the jump ring. I do this before I even begin to put the earring components onto a jump ring.

Put earrings and hook into a jump ring.

Then I open another jump ring and put the earrings onto the open jump ring.

After putting the earring onto the jump ring, I add the hook, making sure it is facing towards the back.

Then, using the pliers and the jump ring tool, close the jump ring.

And that’s it! These diy fringe leather earrings are finished!

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

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My Favorite Faux Leather

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