Emboss your DIY earrings with an embossing pen, embossing powder and a heat tool! I stuck with a simple design for the purpose of the tutorial.
This How to Emboss Leather earrings tutorial shares how to use your Cricut Explore and Cricut Maker to heat emboss earrings using a few simple tools. The embossing pin sets right into latch A of your Cricut. The Cricut machine will draw your design on your leather with the pen an then cut the earring. Simply sprinkle the embossing powder on the drawn shape and heat the emboss powder.
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 the How to Emboss Leather Earrings project can be seen in my YouTube video below.
What You’ll Need to complete this How to Emboss Leather Earrings project
- Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
- Embossing Starter Kit
- Genuine or faux Leather – I used Red genuine leather (Cricut)
- 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.
- Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Standard Green Mats -for faux leather and cork
- Stronggrip Purple mats – for genuine leather
- Basic Cricut Tools
- Huge Cricut tools Bundle
- Leather hole punch – if your project doesn’t have holes
- 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
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 Design Bundles, Pinterest and Etsy. Many bloggers offer them for free and others are available for sale on the Etsy website.
For this How to Emboss on Leather Earrings project, I used a basic teardrop shape from an SVG cut file.
Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project.
Start a new project to make this How to Emboss Leather Earrings project by clicking on the + icon.
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.
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 teardrop for the How to Emboss Leather Earrings project look like when inserted onto the mat.
Re-size the earring, 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.
You’ll want to decide the height of your earring based on personal preference.
For this project, I’m keeping mine at a 2.5 inch height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller. Simply type the desired height in the H field (shown below).
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.
For this project I changed the color of my teardrop to red since that is the color of my leather.
Add a shape to the Canvas
I added a star to my earring. You could also add an image (versus a shape).
To add the star, I clicked on Shape and then I clicked on the star.
Change color of star to match the color of the earring.
The star needs to draw onto the same mat as the leather, so make the color match your teardrop by clicking on the star and then on the colors menu.
Change the star to a DRAW line.
The star is currently on the canvas with a cut line. I need to change it to a draw line because the Cricut is going to draw the star with the emboss pen. To do this, click on the star and then click on the Draw option from the Linetype drop down menu.
You’ll see the image turns to a line of a star.
Re-size the star so that it fits into the teardrop.
Left click on the handle in the lower-right hand corner of the star and drag it towards the center to reduce the size. Place it on top of the earring to determine the right size.
Attach the star and teardrop
While holding down the left click on the mouse, draw a box (select) the teardrop and the star. Then click on Attach in the lower right-hand corner.
Duplicate images, as needed
Now it’s time to duplicate your images. Click a teardrop and then click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.
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 ugly felt.
For this project, I am using genuine leather and I like the look of the back of the earrings so I’m not cutting extras.
MAKE IT
Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut for your earring components, click on the Make It button for this How to Emboss Leather Earrings project.
On the left you’ll see the mat that will be cut.
Notice that the screen shows that the first action that the Cricut will take will be to draw and then after the drawing is complete, it will cut.
Insert your pen into the A latch.
Remove the cap from the embossing pen. Open latch A and push the pen into the opening. You may have to give it a bit of light push to get it in. You can see the pen inserted in the image below.
Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.
If you’re using a Cricut Explore, turn your dial on your Cricut Explore to Custom. This lets you look at the long list of materials. For both the Cricut Explore and the Cricut Maker, you will need to select the material that you’re using for the project.
Click on the Browse All Materials link to see the menu of materials options on your Cricut.
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 this project, I’m using genuine leather, so I’ve selected the Genuine leather option.
If you’re using using the Cricut brand – metallic leather, select the Metallic Leather option. It’s a bit thicker so you’ll want to use this Metallic leather setting to ensure that the cut goes all the way through.
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.
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 cork, 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).
Because you will be drawing on the leather, you need for the good side of the leather to be on your mat facing up.
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 the plastic cover 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.
Putting leather onto your mat with the good side facing up 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 can put your leather with the good side facing up onto your sticky transfer tape.
Place the leather on the mat.
One you load the leather and start the project, the emboss pen will draw the image/shape. Then, after the drawing is done, it begins to cut the teardrop earrings.
I like to get one more pass on the emboss pen drawing. To do this, I tap the Cricut icon button (the go button). You must do this BEFORE you eject the mat! This repeats the full project. After my shape is re-drawn I click on pause before the cutting step begins again and then eject my mat.
Take a look at my mat after it is ejected from the machine. You can see the stars that the emboss pen drew.
Pour the embossing powder on the earrings.
Turn them upside down to remove the emboss powder that isn’t stuck to the star. Don’t tap the earring as you will accidentally remove powder that you don’t want to remove.
Use a dry paint brush to remove excess powder.
Pour excess emboss powder back into the container.
Use the heat tool to create a beautiful heat emboss.
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 either Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or E6000 glue.
I’m not doing that for this How to Emboss Leather Earrings project because I’m using a genuine leather with a pretty red color on the back. 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 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.
Decide which type of hooks you’ll use for this How to Emboss Leather Earrings project.
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. These are the ones I am using for this project. Just push the hook through the holes of the earrings.
And that’s it! This How To Emboss Leather Earrings Project is done!
If you enjoy making diy leather earrings, check out my other posts below.
Everyday Earrings DIY
- Leather Bar Earrings DIY
- How to Emboss Leather Earrings
- DIY Angled Fringe Earrings
- Leather Circle Earrings
- DIY Fringe Leaf-Shaped Earrings
- Cross leather earrings
- FRI-YAY Leather Earring DIY
- Leather Bar Earrings DIY (with metal charm)
- How to Make Genuine Leather Earrings
- Statement Earrings
- Teardrop Cork Earrings
- Hollow Faux Leather Earrings – Teardrop and Leaf Shaped
- Faux Leather Tall Stacked Earrings
- Faux Leather Circle Earrings
- Split Teardrop Faux Leather Earrings
- Faux Leather Stacked Marquise Earrings
- Stacked, wavy earrings – KSU
- Faux leather leaf cutout earrings
- Faux Leather earrings with fringe
- Faux Leather Teardrop Earrings
- Faux Leather Bar Earrings
- Faux Leather Leaf Earrings
Sports
- Football Earrings – Teardrop with football cut out
- Stacked Football earrings
- Chiefs Football Teardrop Earrings
- Chiefs Heart Teardrop Earrings
- Chiefs Arrowhead Earrings
- Chiefs Arrowhead on Teardrop Earrings
My Favorite Leather
My Favorite Faux Leather
- Cork Sheet Haul
- Beans and Peanuts (cork faux leather sheets)
- Art of Fabric Folding
- Pink Antler Sparkle
Valentine’s Day Earrings
- 40 Great Valentine’s Day DIY Earrings
- LOVE Leather Earrings DIY
- Valentine’s Day earrings DIY (heart shape)
- Heart Earrings DIY (Iron On)
- Heart Earrings DIY (with heart cutout)
- DIY Valentine’s Day Earrings
St. Patrick’s Day Earrings
Winter-Themed Earrings DIY
- Snowflake Cutout Teardrop Faux Leather Earrings
- Snowman Leather Iron On Earrings
- Buffalo Check Snowman Cutout Earrings
Christmas -Themed Earrings DIY
