Heart Earrings DIY

These leather earrings are the perfect accessory for the Valentine’s Day season.

Making this heart earrings DIY is easy with a Cricut machine and your choice of material – choose, cork, faux leather or leather. Scroll all the way to bottom to see many combinations of materials and designs!

My website contains affiliate marketing links, which means that when you make a purchase after clicking my links, I may receive a small commission for any sales made from links you click on. This doesn’t change the price you pay for the items.

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 completing this hearts earrings DIY can be seen in my YouTube video below.

What You’ll Need to complete this Hearts Earrings DIY

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Genuine Leather or faux leather (I’ve linked up to specific leathers under each photo at the bottom of the post.
Earring supplies – earring hooks, jump rings, pliers, jump ring tool. This is the kit that I bought on Amazon and love it! It also comes with a bundle of faux leather sheets as well as all of the tools you’ll need to make earrings.
Earring wire hooks with balls – I used this style of hook for a lot of these earrings. They’re super easy to use.
- Gold Plated
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Standard Green Mats for faux leather, cork, and faux suede
- Stronggrip Purple mats for genuine leather
Basic Cricut Tools
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Leather hole punch -smaller punched holes (my new favorite)
Earring Backs
Here is what I use to smooth my leather edges.

STEPS TO MAKE

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 this Heart Earrings DIY, 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 this heart 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.

Heart Earrings DIY, inserting SVG file onto the canvas

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 this heart earrings DIY looks like when it is inserted onto the canvas. It comes onto the canvas over 7″ tall.

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 this project, I set the earring height to 2″. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller.

faux leather heart earring on a Cricut canvas

Duplicate the Earring

Select the earring by clicking on it and then duplicate it by clicking on the Duplicate button.

leather heart earring on a Cricut canvas, ready to duplicate

Create another earring for the back layer.

To create another layer, select one of the earrings and then click duplicate.

duplicating a faux leather Valentine's Day earring

Valentine's Day earrings on a Cricut Canvas

Hide the heart from the earring of back layer.

To hide the heart, click on one of the earring images and then click on the Contour button in the lower right-hand corner.

Hiding heart on the Love earring by using the Contour button

Click on the heart shape and then click on the X in the upper right-hand corner. This action will hide the heart from the teardrop.

diy earrings on a Cricut Design Space canvas

Re-size the back layer, if desired.

Determine if you want the back layer to be a bit larger than the front layer. Making the back layer a bit larger allows the back layer to be more visible.

If I have a cutout in my front layer, I often leave my back layer the same size. If you want to make it larger, do it now, before you duplicate the back earring.

Duplicate the back earring.

Select the back earring by clicking on it and then click on the Duplicate button.

Duplicate diy leather earrings on a Cricut Design Space mat

Change earring components to the right color.

Changing the images to another color is important because you need to cut them on separate mats.

I’m going to do a black front layer and a pink back layer.

Select the two front earrings (with heart cutout) by left clicking and drawing a square around them. Then click on the color button as shown below.

Changing color of a leather earring on a Cricut

Select the back layer of earrings by left clicking and drawing a box around them and then click the pink color (or whatever color you’re making).

leather Valentine's Day earrings on a Cricut

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 any felt.

For this project, I am using genuine leather so I don’t need to cut additional earring pieces. However, I’ll show steps for making additional pieces in case you are doing so. To make the extra teardrops, I highlighted the back teardrops and clicked Duplicate.

duplicating diy faux leather earrings on a Cricut

diy leather earrings on a Cricut in Cricut Design Space

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 this heart earrings diy project.

On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut.

mats ready to cut on Cricut Design Space

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.

Determine what materials you’ll use.

You can make these earrings with faux leather, genuine leather, cork or any combination of these. But you’ll need to know which materials you are using for each layer before you move onto the next step. Before cutting the material, you need to set the Cricut the machine to the right material to cut the material successfully.

For this project, I’m going to cut the front layer with faux leather and the back with genuine leather. This will allow me to cover key points of both materials in this post.

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 material, making changes necessary based on the material being cut 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

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.

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.

If you’re using genuine leather, select either the Genuine Leather or Metallic Leather option.

Move the star wheels, if directed.

The Cricut machine has star wheels to keep materials from shifting during cutting. However, when cutting thicker materials such as genuine leather, 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. When I’m making earrings, I just leave my star wheels to the right even which I’m cutting 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.

It is really easy to opening up the grey latch marked B and remove the housing unit with the fine cut blade when cutting genuine leather. After removing the housing unit, just drop the deep cut blade housing unit and push the B latch closed. Watch my YouTube video for this project if you want to see me switch them out.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

I almost always put my materials on the mat good side down. I only put the material good side up when it is glitter material.

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

Glue earring pieces together, if necessary.

As I mentioned earlier, 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.

To do this, I glue two earrings together using E6000 glue.

Here are a couple pictures from another project.

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 the back side of the 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.

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

Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your diy faux leather earrings.

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.

A jump ring isn’t closed. This means with the right tools, you can open it to put on the earring components.

These are the two tools that I use to open and close my jump rings. They’re both in this awesome starter kit.

I hold one side of the jump ring with my pliers. With my other hand, I use my jump ring tool to push one side of the jump ring back (to open). It is important not to open the jump ring by pulling them to the left and right. If you do it that way, it will be hard to close the jump ring, while keeping the shape. Instead, push the ring back/front to open the jump ring.

Note: If you’re using the jump ring tool, find the slot on the tool that is sized right for the jump ring.

Put a hook onto a jump ring for each earring.

My new best practice is to put a jump ring onto the hook and to close the jump ring. I do this before I even begin to put the earring components onto a jump ring.