Ghost Earrings DIY

These faux leather ghost earrings are perfect to show your BOO-tiful Halloween spirit.

This ghost earrings diy is easy and these faux leather earrings are just darling!

In this post, I’ll show you several versions of this faux leather earrings Halloween project. I’ll also link up my materials to help you repeat the project with the same materials. And as an added bonus my video tutorial will share how-to basics for creating faux leather earrings with a Cricut machine.

Most people don’t know that faux leather earrings and genuine leather earrings are easy to make by cutting the leather and faux leather on your Cricut machine. And the best part is that you can easily cut all of these materials on a both a Cricut Explore Air or Cricut Maker. Simply cut the leather materials and add earring jump rings and hooks and you’re ready to go.

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Check out my favorite DIY earring essentials on Amazon here!
Check out my favorite DIY earring materials on Amazon here!

Project Photos

purple double-sided glitter faux leather
double-sided black faux leather – I LOVE this double-sided faux leather kit on Amazon. I have ordered this item A LOT! I love it because it cuts very nicely on my Cricut and it looks great on both sides!

blue glitter faux leather (cut on shimmered leather)
double-sided black faux leather – I LOVE this double-sided faux leather kit on Amazon. I have ordered this item A LOT! I love it because it cuts very nicely on my Cricut (genuine leather setting) and it looks great on both sides!

smooth white leather
double-sided black faux leather – I LOVE this double-sided faux leather kit on Amazon. I have ordered this item A LOT! I love it because it cuts very nicely on my Cricut and it looks great on both sides!

Supplies for this Skull Earrings DIY

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 cutting mats.
- Bulk roll of transfer tape
- Standard Green Mats -for faux leather, cork, and HTV.
- Stronggrip Purple mats – for genuine leather
Basic Cricut Tools
Cricut Brayer
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.
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
Cricut Transfer Tape, Strong Grip
Cricut Transfer Tape, Standard Grip
Bulk Transfer tape (great value!)
Earring Backs
Earring Cards
Plastic bags for earrings

SVG File

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

I shopped around for this darling ghost svg file. I found the ghost shape I wanted in a file that included more elements. It was actually a design shown on a baby onesie. I deleted the extra elements and just used the ghost.

Check out my project YouTube video below.

Materials Cricut Settings

Click on the Browse All Materials link to see the menu of materials options on your Cricut.

When I use non-Cricut faux leather, the Shimmer Leather option normally works best for me. For this ghost earrings diy, I used the Shimmered Leather option for all of the thin glitter faux leather and the white faux leather (all the front layers).

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

You can also use genuine leather to cut real leather Halloween ghost earrings. When doing this, I normally select the Genuine leather option from the Material Settings menu. I also use the genuine leather setting when I use Heat n Bond to adhere two thicker pieces of faux leather together (making double-sided faux leather) before I make my cuts. This setting also works great when I cut the double-side faux leather and double-side glitter sheets that I order on Amazon.

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. Be sure to move the star wheels when cutting genuine leather so that you don’t get track marks on your genuine leather.

Cricut Blade Selection

Make sure you are using the right blade.

You can cut faux leather, faux suede, cork, 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 (or using that materials setting), you’ll need to use the Cricut deep blade. When I am working with a really thick glitter sheet, I do sometimes change to a deep cut blade.

cutting faux leather earrings on a Cricut maker

Placing material on the cutting mat(s)

The approach you use to place the material on your mat plays a big role in your material cutting success.

How to get a good stick on the 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 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 faux leather sheets. I do this because the chunky 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 .

I use strong grip transfer tape for more challenging cuts and standard grip for other cuts. And sometimes I even use shelf liner paper from the Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree contact paper shelf liner paper does not have a very strong grip so I only use it on materials without stretch and cuts that don’t have center cut outs.

For these projects I used this bulk transfer tape. It is very economical!

putting transfer paper on a Cricut standard grip mat to make diy earrings

Shop Cricut for great deals on Cricut earring supplies

I find that the center cutouts in earrings create a lot of pull on the material and I need something strong holding the material on my mat during the cut.

Material face down for face up?

My answer: it depends.

I used to always face my materials on the mat with the good side facing down. But a lot has changed for me over the years, and more specifically recently as I’ve begun to cut more printed and soft textured 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 chunky glitter, I place my faux leather glitter sheet onto the mat with the glitter side facing down and then tape the piece onto the mat.

I normally place my faux leather onto the mat with the good side facing down. And when cutting cork sheets, I most often put the material onto my mat with the good side facing up. I’ve cut it with the good side facing down as well, and it works that way too. Often, my material is adhered back to back prior to my cut (with Heat n Bond), so a good side has to be facing down. A photo of a double-sided black faux leather is below.

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.

Using brayer to press faux leather onto the Cricut mat

Size of Earrings

The size of earrings is a matter of preference.

For this project, I made the front ghost 1.75″ long and the back ghost 1.8″ long. The great thing about diy faux leather earrings is that you can make them as big or as small as you like!

How to Make Faux Leather Double Sided

The back of some faux leather and faux suede earrings 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.

Be sure to check out this double-sided faux leather and this double-sided glitter faux leather. It makes it super easy to cut earrings that look great on both sides. I have ordered each of these sets more than once because they cut nicely on my Cricut. And calculate the cost per sheet and it’s awesome!

No worries if you don’t have double-sided leather, you can create earrings that look good on both sides by taking one of the approaches outlined below.

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 Glue.
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.

How to Cut the Faux Leather if the Cut doesn’t Go Through

While you hope it never happens, sometimes when you’re cutting thicker materials, the blade doesn’t make it all the way through the material.

When this happens, I first cut each earring component into a square because it is easier for me to handle smaller pieces when trimming.

I pull the faux leather apart to find the cut line and cut carefully along that line,

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.

For these ghosts, I ran the burnishing agent around the outer edge of the ghosts and around the eyes.

burnishing agent on faux lather earrings

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

I use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy leather earrings. 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).

cutting hole in leather earrings diy project

ghost earrings ready for ball wire hooks

Open the fish hook earring

The basic fish hook earrings below are easy to work with.

You either need a couple pairs of pliers or a jump ring tool and one pair of pliers to work with the jump rings and earring hooks. 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.

Open the hook

Take a close look at the loop closure at the bottom of the hook and figure out which side is the side that isn’t connected. You may need to lift the ball to see where the opening is.

If you want to place your earrings directly on the hook, you can do it by placing 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.

two sets of pliers, one on each side of earring hook

Turn the pliers that is on the side of the circle that isn’t connected to open the loop so that you can put the earring onto the hook.

You can then place the earrings in the opening and then close it back up.

Ball Wire Hooks

For these earrings, I chose to use ball wire earrings. These are super easy to use because you simply pull the earring onto the hook. I normally don’t even need pliers to work with these kinds of hooks.

And that’s it! This ghost earrings DIY is finished!

Check out other DIY Earrings Below

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Chiefs Arrowhead on Teardrop Earrings

Ghost Earrings DIY