Hollow Leaf Faux Leather Earrings

The hollow leaf design lets more of the cute pattern in the back peek out!

diy faux leather earrings, cut on a Cricut Explore

These hollow leaf faux leather earrings and hollow teardrop earrings are so cute! I love hollow shapes on my diy earrings, especially when a solid color is paired with a pattern.

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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 these diy faux leather earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below.

General Supplies Needed:

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.
Basic Cricut Tools
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
14K Gold
.925 Sterling Silver
300 piece set silver
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
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
Earring Backs
Earring Cards
Plastic bags for earrings

I’ll share some additional photos and link to the materials I used for each below.

yellow textured faux leather, purchased from etsy
Striped Faux Leather
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to see the leaf-shaped earrings and click here to see the teardrop shaped earring in my etsy shop.

Cricut Green Faux Leather
Tartan Plaid Faux Leather
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to see the leaf-shaped earrings and click here to see the teardrop shaped earring in my etsy shop.

Red Faux Leather (from an assortment pack)
White/Black Plaid Faux Leather
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to see the leaf-shaped earrings and click here to see the teardrop shaped earring in my etsy shop.

Gray Floral and Pink/gray plaid
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to check out these earrings in my etsy shop.

Textured yellow faux leather
Houndstooth faux leather
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to check out these earrings in my etsy shop.

hallow leaf faux leather earrings, camo earrings

Camo faux leather, purchased at etsy
Camel faux leather, purchased at etsy
Want to skip the DIY? Click here to check out these earrings in my etsy shop.

Genuine Leather back with Cork Front, Black and White Design – This sold out, but here is another black and white design and there are LOTs of great cork with leather back options in this shop.
Black Palm Braided Genuine Leather, Black

HOW TO MAKE 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.

For these diy faux leather earrings, I used an SVG cut file that I bought at:

GalaxyDigital – Hollow Leaf Teardrop

Hollow Leaf svg file from galaxy digital

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your diy faux leather earrings by clicking on the + icon.

making faux leather earrings on a Cricut

or if you’re already in a new project, click the plus button as shown below.

How to make faux leather earrings on a Cricut machine

Upload SVG file.

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 word that you would type in if you were looking for the file. This makes it much easier when you’re looking for the file 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.

input svg file onto canvas in Cricut Design studio

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 hollow leaf faux leather earrings look like after being added to the canvas. Notice that this file has two shapes. The top row has a point leaf hollow earring and a diamond-like smaller shape. The bottom row features a hollow teardrop with a small teardrop shape. I’m going to make one of each pair for this project.

These earrings come in at a pretty big size, measuring at over 4″ each.

diy faux leather earrings on cricut canvas

Re-size the hollow leaf faux leather earrings and hollow tear drop 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

I clicked on the group (all images are part of a group) and used the icon in the lower right corner to reduce the size of the earrings.

modifying size of an image on Cricut Design Space

After playing around with the size a bit, I ended up with a height of 4.7 for the image. You can just enter 4.7 into your height field if you want yours to match my height. At this height, the earrings are about 2 inches tall.

changing height of faux leather earrings in Cricut Design Space

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

Change earring components to the right color.

Changing the images to the right color keeps things clear when you’re putting different materials and colors through the cutting machine.

To change the colors, you must first Ungroup the image so that you can modify each component of the image.

Ungroup an image by clicking on ungroup button in cricut design studio

You need to click on each of the earrings on the left and Ungroup them as well.

ungroup an image in Cricut Design studio

One components are Ungrouped, you can change the color of the components. I’m going to cut my bigger pieces in black and use a pattern for my smaller piece. I used red to represent my pattern.

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 your hollow leaf faux leather earrings.

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

diy faux leather earrings on a cutting mat in Cricut Design Studio

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

If you are using a Cricut Explore, turn your dial to Custom. You will need to select a material for EACH mat. If you’re using a Cricut Maker, there isn’t a dial on the machine and you’ll go ahead and select the materials in Cricut Design Space.

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.

And, if you’re using genuine leather, select the genuine leather or the metallic leather option. The metallic leather will cut a tad bit deeper.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can cut faux leather, faux suede, and leather on the Cricut Explore. 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).

Faux Leather/Faux Suede

Before you put the material on the mat, you’ll want to look at the back of it to determine what is is made of. I normally place my material on my mats good side down.

Also, I like to determine how much of the leather or suede 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 suede or leather 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 leather/suede because I want minimize waste of the material. Note: don’t put your plastic on your mat if you’re using a Cricut Maker. The Cricut pulls the full mat into the machine and the plastic will get crumpled unless it is on the mat perfectly.

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 the faux suede or faux leather onto your mat. I don’t have one of those so I usually use a dough roller.

Trim any felt or fuzz 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 snowman faux leather earrings.

Glue the backs

When I don’t like the look of the back of my earrings, I use Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue because it doesn’t dry so fast and I have time to get my earrings situated/lined up better.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

This file came with a set of earrings with holes and another without holes. I chose to use the file without holes and will cut my own.

When my earrings don’t have holes, 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. You can also use Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through faux leather and faux suede, but it is best to go through just one layer at a time if you do this.

Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your diy hollow leaf 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.