Hobby Lobby Faux Leather

Tips to Cut Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon.

In this post I’ll share my tips and and tricks for cutting Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon on a Cricut machine.

It’s easy to cut genuine leather and faux leather using a Cricut machine. Faux leather is especially easy because you can cut it using the normal fine tip blade and the standard grip green mat. However, the Hobby Lobby faux leather can be challenging sometimes. I’ve made a lot of earrings with this ribbon and I’ve messed up a lot as well.

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Check out my favorite diy earring essentials here!

What I love about Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon

There are many reasons to love Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon.

1. Price

First, it’s a great price! Each roll of faux leather ribbon is normally $4.99, but they often promote them for 50% off, making each roll approximately $2.50 each.

The ribbon is 8 inches wide and 24 inches long. Many pieces of faux leather are about 8 inches wide by 11 inches long and cost about the same price. Of course, sizes and prices of faux leather vary, but I find this Hobby Lobby ribbon to give me twice as much for my money.

You can make a lot of earrings with one spool, making it a great material for DIY leather earrings. If you’re making a medium size teardrop earring, you can fit about five earrings across and 11 rows with one spool (on a 24″ mat). That’s 55 single-sided earrings.

2. Designs

There are so many faux leather ribbon design options! Whether you are looking for a Cheetah print, a floral design, or are in the market for buffalo plaid, there are so many designs to love in the Ribbon Boutique line up at Hobby Lobby.

Four of my favorite designs are shown in the picture below. I love that these spools contain some of the most on-trend designs.

And I should mention, the great breadth of solid colors of faux leathers as well, including black, silver, and gold.

3. Accessibility

I love buying faux leather on etsy and Amazon. There are oh, so many awesome faux leather and genuine leather options at my fingertips. And shipping is so fast these days that I can usually have my order in just a few day.

But there are times I need something right away, and that makes Hobby Lobby such a great option. Fortunately, these faux leathers are just a 5 minute drive away.

In case you’re interested, my favorite etsy shops for faux leathers are listed below:

4. Material Options

Hobby Lobby has some pretty fun materials in the line. Glitter faux leather works for so many different earring options. And they have fine and chunky glitter options. They also have some fun materials like this fun faux fir cheetah material.

Why Cutting Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon is sometimes challenging

There are several challenges I’ve run across when cutting faux leather from Hobby.

Inconsistent Material Thickness

The thickness of the faux leather varies from design to design. Some are extremely thin (paper thin) and others are a bit thick (over 1mm).

With thicknesses varying, it means that you need to figure out a setting for each one. This sometimes takes a few passes to figure out.

The thickest Hobby Lobby materials (mostly the thicker solid color pebbled faux leather) are so thick that I find that they cut best with a deep cut blade, even though they’re not genuine leather.

Below is a thicker pebbled leather (silver).

The solid black faux leather shown below is super thin!

Inconsistent Backing Material

If you look at the back of the faux leathers, you’ll see that some backing is different than others.

Some is stretchy, which I find pulls off the mat during more intricate cuts.
The faux leather with fleece backing doesn’t always cut clean.
Some material is harder, more of a plastic-like, which I find cuts more easily.
You’ll find that some faux leather is like a fabric and doesn’t really have any kind of backing at all.

Material Variances

Some material are more of a plastic, while some are a fabric. And of course, the faux fur faux leather is different than either of those. I’ve found that these variances also affect my cut.

My video on this topic, where I show my tips and tricks is linked below.

Keys To Successfully Cut Faux Leather

There are several keys that I’ve found to contribute to a successful cut.

1. Use a sticky mat!

A sticky mat is important to ensure that the mat will hold the material. The Standard Grip works great for Hobby Lobby faux leather. If you have a mat that is less sticky, tip #2 may work for you.

2. Use transfer tape on mat.

I like to put transfer tape on the mat. This helps hold the material down really well, especially if you’re cutting a shape out of the center.

Cut a piece of the transfer tape and put it onto the mat with the sticky side up.

Once the transfer tape is on the mat, put the faux leather onto the sticky transfer tape (with the good side of the faux leather facing down).

3. Put something on the back of the challenging materials.

I find that putting something on the back of the thinner and flimsier materials helps stiffen up the material for the cut. Two approaches that I’ve used successfully follow.

First, I sometimes use heat transfer vinyl. I iron black heat transfer vinyl onto the back of the faux leather and then cut it. Keep in mind that this makes the material a bit thicker when picking your material setting.

heat transfer vinyl on back of Hobby Lobby faux leather

Second, also sometimes use HeatnBond Ultrahold. I iron it onto the back of the faux leather and the material cut much nicer for me. You can see me do this in the YouTube video linked above.

Applying Heat and Bond to the Back of Faux leather

Place the side with the texture (shown below) against the back side of the fabric and then use the heat press (or an iron).

4. Use the right setting.

The material setting determines the pressure of the cut and the number of times the cut occurs so picking the right one is important. This definitely takes trial and error.

I’ve had success using the Faux leather (Paper thin setting) on the really thin ones that are basically just fabric. But honestly, I use shimmered leather for most of the Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbons, even when I know it is too much pressure. Admittedly, there are a few thinner fabric faux leathers that don’t need this setting so when I use Shimmered leather, it leaves cut marks on the mat (because the material is thin).

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

5. Use center of mat, when working with the challenging materials.

If you’re working with a challenging material, I recommend using the center of the mat. It’s often more sticky, it’s clear of the white star wheels, and it allows plenty of room to tape around the material.

6. Put the material on the mat, good side facing down.

In my experience, the cut almost always looks better when the leather is placed onto the cutting mat with the good side down. I’ve tested this many times.

7. Use tape around the material, on each side.

I’m not a big fan of having to tape my material down. And, if you’re using the strong grip contact paper on your mat, that should do the trick. But if you’re not doing tip 1 or if that just isn’t enough, you can use tape around the edges of your material to help hold it in place. I’ve used painters tape and masking tape. My preference is thin masking tape.

8. Ensure the material is pressed firm against the mat

After placing the material on the mat, I use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto the mat. Before I had one, I used a pizza roller to do the same thing.

cutting hobby lobby leather diy earrings on a Cricut

9. Use the right blade.

The Cricut standard fine-cut blade is almost always going to be the best option when cutting Hobby Lobby faux leather. Faux leather isn’t typically thick enough/tough enough to need a deep cut blade. One exception to this would be if you create double-sided faux lather before cutting it.

People often change to a deep cut blade when they’re experiencing issues, but the issue almost always is something else. Most likely, changing the blade to a deep cut blade isn’t going to help you with Hobby Lobby faux leather.

10. Do multiple passes before ejecting the mat.

Before ejecting your mat, check to see if the cut has gone through the faux leather. If it hasn’t, send the cut through for another pass by pressing the Go button again (that’s what I call it, the one with the Cricut logo on it).

Pressing this button sends the project through another set of cuts. For example, if it cut two times on the first pass, it will cut another two times on a second pass.

Pull it up for a peek to see if it cut through. If not, send it through for another pass. You MUST do this before you eject it.

11. Change the pressure of the cut.

If you need to do another pass, consider changing the pressure on the second cut. Most times, my second pass does the job without even changing the pressure on my Maker.

12. Make sure your blade is clean (and sharp).

Remove the blade from the machine and look at the blade. Clean off any fuzz/debris. I normally just blow the debris off.

When my blade needs cleaning, I sometimes poke my blade into a ball of tin foil.

cleaning cricut blade with aluminum foil ball

13. Be patient and don’t give up.

There are some Hobby Lobby faux leathers that I loved and I didn’t give up.

Cut one earring at a time when figuring out the settings for your machine. This will reduce the amount of waste while figuring it out.
Go into it knowing that you may have some learnings (aka bad cuts). This material is so inexpensive that it never bothered me too much.

My Favorite DIY earring supplies:

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.
Earring wire hooks with balls – I used this style of hook for these earrings. They’re super easy to use and won’t require jump rings or jump ring tools/pliers.
- Gold Plated
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Standard Green Mats -for faux leather, cork, and HTV.
- Strong grip Purple mats – for genuine leather
Cricut Easy Press – There are a few options. All work, but I usually use a 9″ x 9″.
Cricut Easy Press Mat
Basic Cricut Tools
Cricut Brayer
Huge Cricut tools Bundle
Leather hole punch (Larger holes, smallest is 2)
Smaller 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 E6000 glue
Heat and Bond
Earring Backs
Plastic bags for earrings

Check out these other DIY earrings below.

St. Patrick’s Day Earrings

Valentine’s Day Earrings

Everyday Earrings
These can be seasonalized as well with designs and colors:

Winter-Themed Earrings

Christmas-Themed Earrings: