Fringe Leather Earrings DIY

Make these earrings with a Cricut machine, hooks, and a little bit of leather.

This fringe leather earrings DIY is an easy project that you can make with a Cricut Explore or a Cricut Maker. It’s easy to cut both leather and faux leather with a Cricut machine.

If you decide to use genuine leather for this project, you will need to use a deep cut blade in your Cricut machine. For faux leather, you can use the regular fine tip blade.

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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 this fringe leather earrings diy can be seen in my YouTube video below.

What you’ll need to make this fringe leather earrings diy

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Genuine Leather – I used this awesome Box of Genuine Leather Scraps from Amazon
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 – This is another type of hook that is super easy to use and won’t require jump rings or jump ring tools/pliers. I didn’t use these for this project, but I know it’s a preference for many so I’m including the links below.
- Gold Plated
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Standard Green Mats -for faux leather, cork, and HTV.
- Stronggrip Purple mats – for genuine leather
Basic Cricut Tools
Huge Cricut tools Bundle
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Leather hole punch – This leather punch makes much smaller holes than the one above.
Here is what I use to smooth my leather edges.
Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or E6000 glue – this is what I use to glue an earring piece to the back of faux leather earring for a more finished look.
Earring Backs
Plastic bags for earrings

HOW TO MAKE THESE DIY EARRINGS

Select an earring template and upload it into Cricut Design Space.

You can find many templates for your earrings on Design Bundles, Pinterest and Etsy. Many bloggers offer them for free and others are available for sale on the Etsy website.

For this fringe leather earrings diy, I used this great fringe earring bundle, which includes many variations of shapes and fringe.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make the fringe leather earrings diy 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.

inserting fringe earring svg onto the canvas 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 fringe leather earrings diy looks like after being added to the canvas. These fringe earrings come onto the mat very large (over 7 inches tall)!

Re-size the diy faux leather earrings, if needed.

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

For this project, I’m going to create an earring with a 2.5 inch height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller. Simply type your desired font into the H field.

changing the height of the fringe earrings on the Cricut mat

Duplicate images, as needed

Now it’s time to duplicate your image. Click the earring and then click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.

leather earrings on a mat before one of them is flipped

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.

I like the look of this genuine leather (shown below) so I’m not cutting a second set of earrings.

back of genuine leather for fringe leather earrings

Flip any necessary images.

When you’re working with an image that isn’t symmetrical you’ll need to decide if you want to reverse one of them. Consider whether you want to flip the image of the shape for the second earring. Flipping an image just reverses it.

If you decide to do this, 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.

flip one of the diy leather fringe earrings

The image below shows the earring after it was flipped.

the fringe earring after it had been flipped

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 the fringe leather earrings diy project.

On the left you’ll see the mat ready to be cut.

Mirror your design, if necessary

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.

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

On a Cricut Explore, 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.

Selecting a material from the Browse all materials menu on Cricut Design Space for your 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 for me.

For this project, I’m using genuine leather, so I’ve selected the Genuine 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.

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).

Place your material onto the mat with the good side facing down.

When I’m cutting on my Cricut Explore, 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. For faux leather, place the material on the green standard grip mat. For genuine leather, place your material on the purple strong grip mat.

Note: When using the Cricut Maker this doesn’t work for me because the mat gets pulled all the way into the machine and unless the plastic cover is PERFECTLY lined up, it gets bent up. When I use my Cricut Maker, I either use parchment paper or one of my old plastic mat covers that I’ve trimmed to about 12.2 inches wide.

placing genuine leather on the Cricut strong grip mat with the good side facing down

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 ensure leather is adhered to the Cricut mat

Protecting Mat with Strong Grip Transfer Paper

Cutting fringe earrings typically leaves your mat pretty messy. To help protect it and lead to a longer mat life, I like to put Cricut Strong Grip transfer tape onto my mat. Just cut a strip (I cut mine 3″ tall) and put it onto your mat with sticky side facing up. Then you put your leather face down onto your sticky transfer tape.

putting strong grip transfer tape onto strong grip Cricut mat to protect it from leather

strong grip transfer tape on a Cricut mat, used to protect the mat from leather fibers

genuine leather cutting on the Cricut Explore machine

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.

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.

use leather hole punch to punch hole in diy faux leather earrings and diy leather earrings

Decide which type of hooks you’ll use.

Supplies to put the hooks into the fringe leather earrings diy

The basic fish hook earrings below are easy to work with. You can place an earring component directly into the circle on the bottom of the hook or your can use jump rings to dangle your earring components from your hook.

These French hooks with balls are also easy to work with. You don’t need pliers or jump ring tools to work with these hooks. There are links to various colors at the top of this post.

holding earring hook, ready to put the faux leather statement earring on

Working with Earrings Hooks

It doesn’t take much to put together the first type of 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 and a great gift for anyone that likes to DIY.

The jump ring tool and pliers below come in the kit linked above.

Decide if you’ll use jump rings on the fish hook.

If you only have a single layer in your earring , you can chose to put the earring component right onto the opening at the bottom of the hook. If your components are too thick or you’d simply prefer to have more of a dangle, you can use jump rings. I’ll start by showing you how to put the earring components directly onto the hook.

If you want to put your earring directly on the the bottom of the hook, take a close look at it and figure out which side is the side that isn’t connected.

Place some pliers on one side of the bottom wire.

Then place another pair of pliers on the other side of it (the round circle at the bottom of the hook). Don’t place the pliers on the hook above the circle part.