These DIY faux leather earrings feature a delicate snowflake iron-on that celebrates the winter season.
These diy snowflake earrings can be made with any solid or pattern faux leather or genuine leather. Just pick any heat transfer vinyl (aka iron-on vinyl) to complement your faux leather color or pattern. It’s easy to do an iron on with faux leather.
This blog post leads with pictures of iron on snowflake earring projects that I’ve completed, along with the links to the materials used for the projects. The post will wrap up with detailed instructions on how to make this holiday earrings DIY using a Cricut machine. Hope you find inspiration!
If a link takes you to an Etsy shop and not a direct item, it means the item currently isn’t available. I have found, however, that it is still sometimes in the shop in another listing (as shop owners sometimes list items in a few places). My website contains affiliate marketing links, which means that when you make a purchase after clicking my links, I may receive a small commission for any sales made from links you click on. This doesn’t change the price you pay for the items.
Check out my favorite diy earring essentials list here!
Best DIY Earrings Supplies:
- 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!
- Cricut Cutting Mats
- Bulk contact paper – I use this with every faux leather/genuine cut to keep my mats sticky.
- Standard green mats -for faux leather, cork, and HTV.
- Strong grip purple mats – for genuine leather
- Basic Cricut tools
- Cricut brayer
- Huge Cricut tools bundle
- Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
- Small leather hole punch – much smaller holes than the one above.
- Leather scissors
- Here is what I use to smooth my leather edges.
- Crafter’s Pick fabric glue or Aleene’s fabric glue
- Heat and Bond
- Strong Grip Cricut transfer tape
- Standard Grip Cricut transfer tape
- Cricut Easy Press – A few options follow:
- Mat for Cricut Easy Press
- Earring backs & earring cards
- Plastic bags for earrings
DIY Snowflakes Earrings Project Photos
Red and Black Buffalo Check Faux Leather
White Chunky Faux Leather
Red and Black Buffalo Check Faux Leather
White Double-Sided Faux Leather (I cut this on genuine leather setting)
Black and Silver Speckles Faux Leather
Silver double-sided faux leather
Red Double-Sided Faux Leather
Gold and Black Faux Leather
Red Double-Sided Faux Leather
White and Black Buffalo Check Faux Leather
Mini Red and Black Buffalo Check Faux Leather
Black and Silver Speckles Faux Leather
White Chunky Faux Leather
Holiday Plaid Faux Leather
Gold Double-Sided Faux Leather
Black and White Houndstooth Faux Leather (the cork is sold out)
How to Make diy snowflake 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 various websites. My favorite SVG site is Design Bundles.
For these DIY snowflakes earrings, I used an SVG cut file that I bought on cutcraftdiy.com. Here is a single snowflake earring cut file or you can buy it as part of a winter teardrop earring SVG bundle. I also LOVE all of the different snowflake patterns in this snowflake svg file.
Pick the materials/colors for these snowflake faux leather earrings.
There are so many wonderful places to find faux leathers and genuine leathers. On top of that, there are hundreds and hundreds of colors and patterns of heat transfer vinyl. The options are endless. Picking materials, colors and patterns is my favorite part!
Favorite Leather and Faux Leather Shops
- Beans and Peanuts (great for cork faux leather sheets)
- Art of Fabric Folding (great for faux leather sheets, love their double-sided faux leather)
- Pink Antler Sparkle (great for faux leather sheets)
- Craftyrific
- Millie & Olive (great for faux leather and they have my favorite sports ball materials)
- LBW Jewelry Supplies – (genuine leather, great textured leathers)
- Fiano Leather (genuine leather, this one takes awhile to ship/arrive, but I LOVE it!)
- Frog Jelly Leather (genuine leather, this one has great printed leathers!)
Favorite Heat Transfer Vinyl
- Donkey Craft Vinyl (so MANY great patterns here
- Great Amazon HTV Finds
- Black, white, gold and silver bundle
- Cricut Christmas Glitter Iron On Bundle Set
- Rose Gold iron on vinyl
- Black iron on vinyl
- heat transfer vinyl – red
- red glitter iron on vinyl
- green glitter iron on
- white glitter vinyl
- silver glitter Cricut vinyl
- Foil Sampler Pack
- Lumberjack Pack (includes red and black buffalo check)
Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project
Start a new project to make your diy snowflake earrings
Insert the earring cut file image.
Once you’ve opened a new canvas, upload the cut file for this project, using the upload icon on the left and navigate to the file on your computer.
I always recommend adding tags when uploading new files. If you think you’ll make a lot of earrings, add tags like “snowflake” and “teardrop earring.” This makes it much easier when you’re looking for the file in the future.
After uploading the SVG file, insert it onto the canvas of your new project.
Click on the Images icon on the left.
Tip: To easily find my uploaded files, I usually filter by “uploaded.” Simply, click on the images button until the menu below appears. Then click on Ownership.
Next, click on Uploaded.
Select the cut file you want to use for the diy snowflake earrings . You’ll see the green box around the image when it is selected. Then, click on the insert image button in the lower, right-hand corner. Note: If a project requires more than one image, you can select multiple images and then click the insert images button once you’ve finished selecting them.
This is what the snowflake teardrop earring looks like after being added to the Cricut canvas. The image comes in at a very large size (16 inches tall, and 10 inches wide).
Re-size the teardrop earring.
It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas.
I’m often asked for the right dimensions for DIY leather earrings. The good news is that there is no right number. Change the teardrop earring size to the height that you desire. Teardrop earrings often range in length from 1.25″ up to 2.5 inches long. They can be smaller and larger, but I see most falling within these ranges.
For the the diy snowflake earrings in the project photos, I used the dimensions below.
- Back teardrop earring – 2 inches height, 1.4 inches wide
- Front teardrop earrings – 1.8 inches height, 1.2 inches wide
- Snowflake – .89 inches height, .905 inches wide
Making the Back Teardrop
To make the back teardrop two inches in height, input “2” into the H field. Because it is the back earring, it is the biggest layer. I also modified my width just a little to 1.4. To do that I had to click on the lock icon so that I could change both numbers, without keeping them at their original proportions.
Since we’re going to iron on a piece of snowflake-shaped heat transfer vinyl, I don’t need to cut the snowflake out of the faux leather. To hide the snowflake, click on the teardrop image and then click on the Contour button.
Click on the snowflake shape (it should be shaded after you click on it). Also, I don’t like my holes to cut on the Cricut machine so I’m selecting the hole to hide it so that it won’t cut. After you’ve selected both, click on the X to exit the Contour menu.
This is what the teardrop looks like after removing the cutout (and earring hole).
Create the front teardrop.
To make the front teardrop, click on the first teardrop and then click on the Duplicate button.
This is what the earrings look like on the mat.
Adjust the dimensions of the front layer of the leather teardrop earring. As I mentioned above, my dimensions for the front teardrop of these diy snowflake earrings are 1.8 inches height and 1.2 inches width. I have to first click on the lock and then input these numbers into the height and width field. Remember, the clicking the lock icon and unlocking the icon allows you to change the dimensions without forcing the proportions to remain the same.
Create the snowflake cutout.
The final cutout needed for this diy snowflake earrings project is the snowflake that will be cut on heat transfer vinyl.
To create the snowflake cutout, make another copy of the teardrop by clicking on a teardrop and then clicking duplicate again.
You’re probably wondering why we just added another teardrop to our canvas when we really need a snowflake. We did this because the snowflake shape is still part of the teardrop, it is just hidden.
Click on the newly added teardrop image and click on the Contour button in the lower right-hand corner.
First, we must unhide our snowflake. Do this by clicking on the snowflake so that it is no longer shaded. Then, we must hide our teardrop. To hide the teardrop shape, click on the teardrop shape so that it is shaded. Leave the circle shaded as well. Once the teardrop and circle are shaded, click the X in the upper right hand corner. This will hide those elements and only the tree will remain on the Cricut canvas in Cricut Design Space.
After taking the step above, your canvas will look like this:
Adjust the size of the snowflake, if needed.
I set my measurements for the snowflake to be .89 wide and .905 height.
Change earring components to the right color.
Changing the images to the right color keeps things clear when you’re putting different materials and colors through the cutting machine.
It also helps you see how the various components look when they are stacked on top of each other.
Click on each image and then click on the color box as shown below to change the color of the image. I kept the back teardrop as black, changed the middle teardrop to red, and changed the changed the snowflake to white.
Once the colors are changed, you can move the components so that they are stacked on top of each other to see how the earring will look, as shown below. Note: If you need for one to appear behind another one and it isn’t doing so, select the image and then right click to get the menu pop up. From the menu pop up, click “send to back” and “send to front” to get the image to display properly.
If necessary, resize any of the images to get the look you are trying to achieve.
Duplicate images, as needed
Now that all the components are created for one earring, we need to create the components for our second earring. Select all three layers of the earring by holding down the left click and highlighting the components and then release the left click. Once all three images are selected (and you see the box around the components), click on the Duplicate button.
This add a second set of the images to your Cricut canvas.
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 use double-sided faux leather on my back pieces when making stacked earrings. This makes the back of my earrings look amazing as they turn and move. There are many great double-sided faux leather available for sell right now.
You can also make your own double-sided faux leather by using Heat n Bond (like I did in this project). Or, you can cut a second set of the back teardrops for the back earrings and glue them back to back to cover any material you don’t like.
If you decide to cut additional teardrops for the back, click on the back teardrop and clicked Duplicate two more times.
Flip any necessary images.
When you’re working with an image that isn’t symmetrical you’ll need to decide if you want to flip one of them. Consider whether you want to flip the image of the snowman for the second earring. Flipping an image just reverses it.
If you decide to do this, select the image (snowflake) and then click on the Flip button on the bar at the top. It will give you an option to select a horizontal flip or a vertical flip. Click on the Horizontal option. This will reverse your image.
The snowflake is symmetrical so I didn’t flip it.
MAKE IT
Once your mat has all the earring components for this diy snowflake earrings project ready to cut for your snowflake leather earrings, click on the Make It button to cut your earrings.
On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut.
Mirror your design, if necessary
Since the good side of your leather typically goes onto the mat facing down, click on the mat where your earrings are and click mirror. Even when the items you are cutting are symmetrical, this is just a good habit.
Any time you’re working with iron-on materials, you also need to mirror the images. Go ahead and click the mirror button on for each of the mats.
Select the correct material setting
If you’re working on a Cricut Explore Air, turn your dial to custom. You will select the material from the list on the computer. If you’re working on a Cricut Maker, you don’t have a dial on your machine.
Click on the Browse All Materials link to see the menu of materials options on your Cricut.
If you’re using Cricut faux leather, choose the Faux Leather (Paper Thin) option. The Cricut icon on the left indicates that the setting is for a specific Cricut material product. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the material, click on Done.
I’ve found that when I’m using a non-Cricut faux leather or a sheet of cork that is 8mm-1mm thick, the Shimmer Leather option normally works best. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the chosen material, click on Done.
If you’re using genuine leather, select either the Genuine Leather or Metallic Leather option. Metallic leather is a little bit thicker so it is important to select that if you’re using it. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the chosen material, click on Done. I also tend to use the Genuine Leather option when I’m cutting double-sided faux leather due to the thickness of the material.
When cutting chunky glitter, I like to use the denim bonded setting. I tape the material onto the mat with the glitter side facing down and I use the normal fine tip blade.
For your iron on material, just look at the options in the Iron On category and pick the one that matches your material.
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, cork, faux suede, and leather on the Cricut Explore Air and Cricut Maker. When cutting faux leather, cork sheets, and faux suede, you can use the Cricut standard fine point blade. If you’re cutting genuine leather, you’ll need to use a Cricut deep blade. When ordering a deep cut blade, be sure it matches the kind of machine you have. Some are only for the Explore Air machines.
Place the material on the cutting mat.
The approach you use to place the material on your mat plays a big role in your material cutting success.
Getting the material to STICK
Using a 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 painter’s 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. For this reason, you won’t see me use tape very often.
That said, I always use tape any time I am cutting chunky glitter faux leather and fine glitter faux leather. I do this because the glitter faux leather will not stick to the mat, regardless of how sticky the mat is.
Regardless of the material type, I always start by putting transfer tape on my mat. This approach keeps my mat clean and it also holds the material down really well (with the exception of glitter sheets) because it’s super sticky .
Before placing my faux leather on my mat for this snowflake faux leather earrings diy, I cut a piece of transfer paper the size of my material and put it on the mat.
Good side up or down?
I normally put faux leather onto the mat with the good side facing down. However, I don’t like to do this when cutting more soft, textured leather, cork faux leather, or printed leathers.
There is nothing worse than buying 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 (printed leathers) 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.
For glitter faux leather, I place my faux leather glitter sheet onto the mat with the glitter side facing down (on top of the transfer tape) and then tape the piece of glitter faux leather onto the mat with painters tape.
Using a Cricut Brayer
After placing the material on the mat, I always use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto the mat. Again, getting a good stick of the material onto the mat is SUPER important for a good cut.
How to place heat transfer vinyl onto the mat
The shinny side of iron-on material should face down and the dull side faces up. After putting the material onto the mat, I sometimes have to tape my iron on material to the mat to help hold it.
Weed the vinyl.
Once the vinyl is cut, use the Cricut weeder to remove all unnecessary pieces of the vinyl. If you don’t have a weeder, you can use a tooth pick.
Iron On Snowflake
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.
Set the temperature
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 the press should press on your project and it tells you whether to remove the iron on material while it is warm or cool.
For faux leather projects, I use the lowest temperature on my mini Cricut easy press and leave it on for about 20 seconds.
Here are some Cricut Easy Press mat options from Amazon.
Place your diy snowflake earrings on the mat and then place the iron-on vinyl on top of the earrings. Make sure you have them placed where you want them.
If you trim closely to your cutout you will avoid the lines that sometimes occur when using heat transfer vinyl.
Place a piece of parchment paper on top of the earrings (and on top of the transfer paper and vinyl iron ons).
Set the Easy Press onto the earrings.
Remove the carrier paper.
Making Earrings Two Sided
The back of some materials aren’t very attractive because they are often canvas or felt. I sometimes create a double-side material so that if the earring turns, the felt or canvas isn’t exposed.
There are two approaches I take to do this.
- Sometimes I cut the 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 adhere two pieces of faux leather or cork sheets together using Heat n Bond BEFORE I cut the leather. This is my FAVORITE way to work. By gluing them together before I cut, my cuts are beautiful and it saves me a ton of time.
Trim any felt, fuzz, or glue from the earrings.
Using a pair of leather 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.
Place a hole in the top of the earring.
When my earrings don’t have holes, I use a leather punch to put the holes in these diy snowflake earrings . The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. You can also use a Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through some faux leathers.
Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your diy snowflake earrings.
It doesn’t take many tools to put together these diy snowflake 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. This is great for those getting started and a great gift for anyone that likes to DIY.
Determine how you’ll hang your earring on the hook.
Fish hook ear wires are commonly used when making earrings. A common mistake is to attach one jump ring to the hook without making any adjustments to the earring hook. This causes the earring to face sideways.
To make the earring face forward (when using a standard fish hook ear wire) you have three options:
1. Attach the earring directly to the earring hook (with no jump rings).
This is a great option if you have a single layer earring or are working with thin materials. It becomes challenging with the materials that are too thick to fit into the small eye of the hook. Crowding too much material into the small opening will sometimes prevent the earring from handing nicely.
2. Use two jump rings.
If you use two jump rings your earrings will face forward. If the earring has multiple layers and/or thicker materials, you may choose to use a larger jump ring (6mm) for the earring components and smaller jump ring to connect the hook to the larger jump ring. Either way, using two jump rings creates a bit longer drop to your earring and a more dangly earring.
3. Twist the eye of the earring and add one jump ring.
For those that don’t like adding the length and extra dangle of the two jump ring solution, there is a third option. Use pliers while holding the top of the hook to twist the eye of the hook half way. Once it is turned, you can add one jump ring and the earring will face the front. Beware, occasionally, you will do this and the hook will immediately fall apart.
Prepare your hooks for these diy snowflake earrings.
For this project, I used option 3 from the list above. With two layers of faux leather, I knew it wouldn’t fit directly into the hook. And I’d prefer to only use one jump ring. I twisted all my hooks half way.
Open jump rings.
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 earrings 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 the earring hang. In addition, if you’re putting leather and other materials into a jump ring consider the thickness of the items. Thicker materials and components may require a larger jump ring.
For single layer earrings, I typically use a 4mm jump ring. For multiple layer earrings, 6mm works well.
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 or a second set of pliers 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 earrings and hook into a jump ring.
After putting the earring onto the jump ring, add the hook, making sure it is facing towards the back.
Using the pliers and the jump ring tool, close the jump ring.
And that’s it! Your DIY snowflake earrings project is finished!
If you enjoy making diy faux leather earrings, check out my other posts below.
Christmas Earrings DIY
- Buffalo check with Christmas Tree cutout
- Reindeer Iron Onto Teardrop Earrings
- Dangling Christmas Tree Earrings
- Reindeer cutout Earrings
- Ugly Christmas Sweater Earrings
Winter Earrings DIY
- Snowflake Cutout Teardrop Faux Leather Earrings
- Snowman Leather Iron On Earrings
- Buffalo Check Snowman Cutout Earrings
Everyday Earrings DIY
- Pinched Leather Earrings DIY (Narrow)
- Painted Feather Leather Earrings
- Leather Hoops
- Disney Inspired Mouse Earrings DIY
- Leather Earrings with Chains
- Circle Cut Out Earrings with Strap
- Leather Bar Earrings DIY
- How to Emboss Leather Earrings
- DIY Angled Fringe Earrings
- Leather Circle Earrings
- DIY Fringe Leaf-Shaped Earrings
- Cross leather earrings
- FRI-YAY Leather Earring DIY
- Leather Bar Earrings DIY (with metal charm)
- How to Make Genuine Leather Earrings
- Statement Earrings
- Teardrop Cork Earrings
- Hollow Faux Leather Earrings – Teardrop and Leaf Shaped
- Faux Leather Tall Stacked Earrings
- Leather Circle Earrings
- Split Teardrop Faux Leather Earrings
- Faux Leather Stacked Marquise Earrings
- Stacked, wavy earrings – KSU
- Faux leather leaf cutout earrings
- Leather earrings with fringe
- Faux Leather Teardrop Earrings
- Bar Earrings
- Faux Leather Leaf Earrings
Sports Earrings DIY
- Football Earrings – Teardrop with football cut out
- Stacked Football earrings
- Chiefs Football Teardrop Earrings
- Heart Chiefs Teardrop Earrings
- Arrowhead Shaped Chiefs Earrings
- Chiefs Arrowhead on Teardrop Earrings
Valentine’s Day Earrings DIY
- 40 Great Valentine’s Day DIY Earrings
- LOVE Leather Earrings DIY
- Valentine’s Day earrings DIY (heart shape)
- Iron On Heart Earrings DIY
- Heart Earrings DIY (with heart cutout)
- DIY Valentine’s Day Earrings
