Christmas Tree DIY Faux Leather Earrings

Making leather earrings with a Cricut machine is easy!

DIY Faux Earring with trees cut with Cricut

These Christmas tree diy faux leather earrings are the perfect way to add a holiday touch to your accessories. It’s easy to make faux leather stacked Christmas tree earrings. This post will show you many project ideas, with LOTS of photos. Scroll beyond all the project photos and you’ll find step by step instructions and photos.

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Check out my favorite diy earring essentials list here!

Christmas Tree Project Photos

diy Christmas tree faux leather earrings made on a Cricut machine

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather
Green crackle faux leather

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather
Green cork faux leather

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather
Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather
Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather
Green basketweave faux leather

Black Double-Sided Faux Leather

Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)
Silver textured faux leather

Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)
Double-sided silver glitter faux leather

Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)
Double-sided red glitter faux leather

White Double-Sided Faux Leather (I cut this on genuine leather setting)
Silver textured faux leather

Double sided buffalo check faux leather and fine glitter faux leather (favorite!)
Double-sided red glitter faux leather

Christmas tree faux leather earrings made on a Cricut machine

Plaid faux Leather
Silver textured faux leather

Plaid faux Leather
White Double-Sided Faux Leather (I cut this on genuine leather setting)

Baby Cheetah
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Camo Cork
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Silver Splash Cork
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Holiday Zig Zag Cork
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

What You’ll Need:

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Black Faux Leather from Amazon & Buffalo Check Faux leather from 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.
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 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 found this Christmas tree earring SVG cut file at cutcraftdiy.com for just over a dollar. Download the DIY earring cut file to your computer. This file is also part of a winter teardrop earring bundle. I have many posts on my site with this bundle so I’ve linked up the full bundle as well.

finding svg files for faux leather earrings

Pick your materials/colors.

For this faux leather earrings DIY, I picked a great red and black buffalo check pattern for the front faux leather piece of this earring. This faux leather comes from Hobby Lobby and comes on a faux leather ribbon roll. You’ll find it Iin the ribbon section of the store. And the best part is that when the ribbon is 50% off (every couple of weeks), it’s only about $2.50. There is quite a bit of faux leather on the roll. Here is the link for the Hobby Lobby faux ribbon.

I used a sheet of black faux leather for the back of the earring and found faux leather sheets that I really like on Amazon. Here is the assorted pack that my black faux leather sheet was in.

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 “Christmas earrings.” 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.

Insert a teardrop earring file onto your canvas that you can use behind the one with the Christmas tree. Click here for one on etsy.

Re-size the earrings, if needed.

It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas.

I’ve sized the earring with the tree cut-out to be 2.7 inches tall. To change the size, I typed 2.7 in the height field at the top and the earring re-sized.

Once you resize the front earring, you can resize the back earring to make is just large enough to show. In this project, I made my black earring 3″ tall.

cricut design space for faux leather earrings

Duplicate the earrings, as needed.

Once you get the front and back earring sized correctly, duplicate them.

Take a look at the back of the faux leather and assess how it looks. Many faux leathers have a felt-type backing. Others may have a cheap canvas look to them. If you don’t like the look of the back you might want to cut extra earrings to glue to the back of the earring.

I chose to do that in this project. Because this tree is symmetrical, it was easy. I just needed to print two extra tree earring shapes and two extra black teardrop shapes.

This means I cut 4 tree-shaped earrings and 4 black tear-dropped shaped earrings.

Note: if your earrings aren’t symmetrical, you’ll need to mirror the 2nd set of cutouts since they’re reversed on the back side of the earring.

Send the project to CUT.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can print faux leather and leather on the Cricut Explore. When cutting faux leather, 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 leather, you won’t need to change your blade (if you’re currently using the normal fine point blade).

Make sure you have the machine on the right setting.

If you’re using a Cricut Explore with a dial, turn your dial to custom. And if you have a Cricut Maker, you don’t have a dial to set.

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

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

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. For an intricate cut such as this snowflake design, I wouldn’t cut this on any material other than the Cricut faux leather.

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. I used the shimmered leather option for the white faux leather used on these snowman teardrop earrings.

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.

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.

How to get the material to stick to mat?

Using an extremely 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 snowman faux leather earrings diy, I cut a piece of transfer paper the size of my material and put it on the mat.

How to put materials onto mat

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.

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.

When cutting the faux leather that has felt on the back of it, place the leather on the mat face down (good side down).

Making Earrings Two Sided

The back of some materials 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.

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. For this project, I used this process, gluing the pieces back to back.
I adhere two pieces of faux leather or cork sheets together using Heat n Bond BEFORE I cut the leather. This is my new FAVORITE way to work. By gluing them together before I cut, my cuts are beautiful and it saves me a ton of time.

gluing vinyl together for faux leather earrings

Glue the black faux earrings, back to back as well, using the same process.

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.

I use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy leather earrings when they don’t have holes cut. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time and punches larger holes (2mm is the smallest). Here is an option for a smaller hole leather punch (on this one 2mm is the largest hole it punches).

Gather necessary earring components and tools.

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.

Use the pliers to open the jump ring.

Hold the jump ring with the pliers in one hand.

Use the jump ring tool to separate.

Use the jump ring tool to separate the jump ring by pushing back on the other side of the jump ring. It is important that you push the ring back to open versus pulling the jump ring apart (left and right). Never pull it apart that way to open it as it is difficult to keep its shape when you close it.

working with a jump ring for diy faux leather earrings

Add faux leather earring pieces and earring hook to the jump ring and then close it.

Add the earrings to the opened jump ring, making sure the pieces are facing the right direction. Then add the hook, making sure the hook is in the back.

Close up the jump hook.

These faux leather earrings turned out so cute! I can’t wait to wear them!

Baby Cheetah
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Camo Cork
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Silver Splash Cork
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

Holiday Zig Zag Cork
Black Genuine Leather
Genuine Leather – Great Value Cricut Leather Bundle

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