DIY Leather Bar Earrings

Add metal bars to these earrings in gold or silver.

These DIY leather bar earrings are some of the easiest I make and I love that they take so little material. The silver and gold bars add a special touch to a basic earring.

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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 to make these DIY bar earrings:

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Genuine Leather
- Black genuine leather
- Leather Bundle – red, silver, black, gold – if you’d rather do another color
Rectangle Charms with Hole
- Pewter earring charms – Amazon
- Gold Plated with holes – Amazon
- Rectangle with holes – Hobby Lobby
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 – I used this style of hook for these earrings. They’re super easy to use.
- Gold Plated
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Standard Green Mats – for faux leather, cork, and heat transfer vinyl (HTV).
- Stronggrip Purple mats – for genuine leather
Basic Cricut Tools
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Leather hole punch – I just got this one and love it. The holes are smaller than the punch above. I use both, depending on the earring.
Earring Backs
Here is what I use to smooth my edges (calm down and smooth the flyaways).

See my YouTube video about this project below.

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 DIY Leather Bar Earrings, I used an SVG cut file that I bought from: SVG Cuttables – Assorted SVG Earrings file. If this file appears as sold out, check out this earring svg bundle. It has mostly the same earrings, including these bars. I have it and love it.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your DIY Leather Bar 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.

insert file to make leather bar earrings diy onto Cricut Canvas in Criicut Design Studio

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 Leather Bar earrings look like after being added to the canvas. They come to the mat at 2″ tall. Also, there are two sets of the bar earrings, one with holes and one without.

Delete the set of earrings that you’re not using.

I’m going to use the earrings without holes. Before you can delete the set you need to Ungroup the image by clicking on the image and then clicking Ungroup.

Ungrouping the DIY Leather Bar Earring image on the Cricut Canvas in Cricut Design Studio

Hold down the left click on the mouse or key board and draw a box around the two earrings you want to delete and click on the X in the corner to delete them.

delete the diy leather bar earrings with the holes in them from the Cricut Canvas in Cricut Design Space

diy leather bar earrings on a Cricut canvas in Cricut Design Space

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.

Before you start changing the size on an earring component, you need to group the two earrings together. To do this left click and draw a square around the earrings and then click on Group.

Group the two DIY leather bar earrings together on the Cricut canvas in Cricut Design Space

The metal bars that I’m putting on these earrings are about 1.2″ tall so I’m going to make my earrings 1.5″ tall.

change height of diy leather bar earrings by inputting a desired height into the H field as shown here

Duplicate images, as needed

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 earring for the back earrings and glue them back to back to cover any ugly felt.

For this project, I am using real leather so it isn’t necessary to cut extra earring bars.

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 leather bar earrings.

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

diy leather bar earrings on mat ready to cut on a Cricut machine

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 the material you’ve chosen for your bars.

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 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 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. You won’t be prompted to do this step for faux leather.

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. The exception to this is when the good side is actually messier than the backside (e.g., glitter faux leather).

Also, I like to determine how much of the material 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 Cricut 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 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.

Once I place my plastic on top of the mat, I put the material onto the mat, face down (good side 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 roll genuine leather onto the Cricut mat

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.

To do this, I glue two earrings together using E6000 glue. Today I used genuine leather so I don’t need to glue anything onto the back side of the earrings.

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. I apply it with a tooth pick along the edges. It’s great because it smooths the leather and helps better define the edges.

smoothing the edges of leather to control the flyaways

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 (shown below).

punching a leather bar diy earring with a leather hole punch

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.

If you’re using this traditional type of hook, 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.

Put earrings and hook into a jump ring.

Then open your second jump ring and put your earring components onto it and then put your hook onto the front, making sure the hook points to the back of the earring. Using the pliers and the jump ring tool, close the jump ring.

Using the wire hook with ball end

Lately, I’ve been using wire hooks with balls at the end. These hooks are super easy to use! You don’t need to use jump rings with this kind of hook. Just push the hook through the hole. If you’re interested in these, check out some options here:

The metal charm’s hole wouldn’t go onto my hooks without me pulling it out just a tiny bit with my pliers.