Christmas Tree DIY Faux Leather Earrings
Making leather earrings with a Cricut machine is easy!
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
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
My Favorite Cricut Machine Options
Cutting Tool and Accessory Essentials
Must Have Earring Tools
Must-Have Earring Findings
Heat Press Essentials
Heat Transfer Vinyl
I used to only purchase Cricut brand HTV; however, the colors are very limited. I know enjoy the large range of HTV colors available on Amazon. Check them out here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 a burnishing agent. I apply it with a toothpick 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).
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 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.
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!
See my other posts for more DIY earrings inspiration.
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
My Favorite Leather
My Favorite Faux Leather
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
St. Patrick’s Day Earrings DIY
Easter Earrings DIY
4th of July Earrings DIY
Halloween Earrings DIY
- Boo Teardrop Halloween Earrings DIY
- Bat Halloween Earrings
- Halloween Faux Leather Earrings (Pinched Earrings)
- Skulls Halloween Faux Leather Earrings
- Halloween Faux Leather Earrings Pumpkins
- Ghosts Halloween Leather Earrings
Winter Earrings DIY
- Snowflake Cutout Teardrop Faux Leather Earrings
- Snowman Leather Iron On Earrings
- Buffalo Check Snowman Cutout Earrings
