DIY Valentine's Day Earrings

These heart earrings are easy to make with faux leather or cork and a Cricut machine.

faux leather Valentine's Day Earrings, made on Cricut Explore with genuine leather

I had a lot of fun mixing genuine leather with faux leather while making these Valentine’s Day earrings. When doing these stacked diy earrings, it’s great to mix solids with patterns or textures. See the bottom of this post for even more photos of this earring with different combinations of materials.

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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 Valentine’s Day earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below.

What You’ll Need to make these Valentine’s Earrings

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.
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky Cricut mats. The green mats work fine for this project because we’re using faux leather.
Basic Cricut Tools
Leather hole punch (larger size holes)
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.
Metallic Rose Gold Genuine Leather, from Cricut
Black Genuine Leather, from Cricut
Great faux leathers from Etsy
- Black & White Houndstooth
- Red Basketweaves
- Red texture
- Gold Damask
- Christmas patterns and colors (includes white with gold floral)

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 Valentine’s Day earrings, I used an SVG cut file that I bought on the Design Bundles website.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your diy heart 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 hear earring onto Cricut mat 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 Valentine’s Day earrings looks like after being added to the canvas. It comes in at about 6 inches, which is too big for an earring.

diy earring on 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.

Small teardrops – 1 3/4 inches
Large teardrops – 2 1/2 inches
Medium leaf – 2 1/4 inches
Large leaf – 2 1/2 inches

You’ll want to decide the height of your earring based on personal preference.

For these Valentine’s Day earrings, I’m going to go with a 2″ height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller.

Duplicate the earring.

Click on the earring to select it and then click on duplicate.

Duplicate heart earrings in Cricut Design space

heart earrings on canvas in cricut design space

Create Teardrop for back of stacked earring.

To make a back earring, start by making another duplicate of the earring. To make a duplicate, click on one of the earrings and then click on Duplicate.

Making a duplicate of an image of an earring

Love earrings on a Cricut canvas in Cricut Design Space

Use Contour to hide heart shape from back teardrop.

Click on one of the earring images and then click on the Contour button in the lower right-hand corner.

Using Contour button to hide elements of an image in Cricut Design Space

Click on all images except the teardrop to hide them. They should be shaded. Once they’re shaded click the X in the upper right hand corner. This will hide those elements and only the inside shape will remain.

Using contour to hide elements of an image of an earring

Valentine's Day earrings on canvas in Cricut Design Space

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 to judge the size of a back layer of a stacked earring.

Click on the item and then click on the color box to change the color.

I made my front images a goldish color since I’m using a gold leather for my front layer and I used a red color for my black layer because I’m using a print for my black layer.

Resize the teardrop for the back layer, if desired.

Decide if you want your back earring to be a bit larger than the front earring. I decided to make my back earring a 2.2″ height so I input that info into the height field while I had selected the earring.

Duplicate images, as needed

Duplicate the back teardrop earring once you have it sized how you want it.

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 teardrops for the back earrings and glue them back to back to cover felt backs. I’m not going to cover the backs of my earrings for this project.

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 Valentine’s Day 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 material will almost always go onto the mat facing down, click on each mat where the material is facing down and click mirror. If the cuts on your mat are symmetrical it really doesn’t matter, but it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and click mirror any time your material faces down, as a good practice.

making faux leather earrings on a Cricut

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 a material for EACH mat.

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.

If you’re using genuine leather, chose that. Or, if you’re using a Cricut metalic leather, be sure to select the Metalic leather option.

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. If you are cutting genuine leather, you must move the star wheels over 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. Watch my YouTube video above to see how easy it is to swap the blades.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

Before you put the cork, faux leather or suede 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).

If you’re cutting real, genuine leather, you’ll need to cut on a purple mat.

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.

making diy faux leather earrings in Cricut Design Space

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

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 snowman faux leather earrings.

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 my diy faux leather earrings. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. You can also use Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through faux leather and faux suede, but it is best to go through just one layer at a time if you do this.

Below you’ll see a picture of me using the leather hole punch on a different project.