Leather Bar Earrings DIY

Bar earrings can be made with genuine leather, faux leather, and cork.

This leather bar earrings DIY is a perfect Cricut beginner project for someone wanting to make diy earrings. You can make them with genuine leather, which requires a special deep cut blade or you can make them with faux leather or cork, which can generally be cut with the standard fine cut blade and standard mat. This post share several project pictures, links to key supplies, and instructions.

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 making this leather bar earrings DIY can be seen in my YouTube video below.

EXAMPLE PROJECTS

Each project photo has links to the leather used below it.

Genuine Leather, Poinsettia – Part of s a scrap kit

Genuine Leather, Bright Floral – part of a scrap kit

Genuine Leather back With Cork Front, Cheetah

Leather Bar Earrings diy, black and white pattern

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.

Box of Genuine Leather Scraps from Amazon

Leather Bar Earrings diy, pumpkins for Halloween earrings

Find Something similar at FrogJelly

Bar Leather Earrings DIY Tools & 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 – These are 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.
- 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 E6000 glue
Heat and Bond
Earring Backs
Earring Cards
Plastic bags for earrings

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 bar leather earring DIY, I used an SVG cut file that I bought from one of my favorite SVG websites. You’ll see many of these earring templates in projects on my blog.

SVG Cuttables – Assorted SVG Earrings file

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make this leather bar 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.

selecting the svg file to cut in cricut design space

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 bar leather earrings DIY looks like after being added to the canvas. The earrings come onto the mat at 2″ tall and each earring is about .36″ wide.

You’ll also notice that the image comes in with a set of earrings containing holes and another without holes. Decide which you want to cut.

Ungroup the image

I needed to Ungroup the image so that I could delete the set of earrings that I wasn’t cutting. I decided to make the earrings without the holes. I have a great leather punch that’s easy to use.

To Ungroup, select the image and then click on the Ungroup button.

Delete the images you don’t need.

To delete the images you are not cutting, left click and drag to select/draw a box around the items to delete. Click the X to delete.

I wanted to re-size the earrings, so I went ahead and deletde my second earring. This allowed me to get one earring exactly how I want it, and then I duplicated it.

To delete the earring, simply select the earring and then click on the X to delete.

leather bar earring, delete it by clicking on the x

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.

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

For this project, I want to make some wider bar earrings. I really love that look. So I’m setting my height to 2.25″ and my width to .75″ wide.

To do this, I need to UNLOCK the sizing ration. You can click on the lock icon on the canvas or on the bar above as shown below.

Input the desired dimensions into the H (height) and W (width) fields.

changing size in width and height fields

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 color, select the image and then click on the color box and select the color when the menu appears.

change color of the leather earring diy on the canvas mat

Duplicate images, as needed

To duplicate, click the image and then click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.

duplicating an image on the cricut canvas

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 earrings for the back earrings and glue them back to back to cover any ugly felt.

For this project, I am not cutting extra pieces.

MAKE IT

Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut for your earring components, click on the Make It button to make this leather bar earrings DIY.

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

I always click the Mirror button when the good side of my fabric faces down on the mat. It’s just a good habit. In this case, it really doesn’t matter because the shape is symmetrical.

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

If you’re using a Cricut Explore, turn your dial to Custom. This lets you look at the long list of materials. You will need to select a material for EACH mat. Cricut Maker users can disregard this step since they don’t have this knob.

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 faux leather, if you are using 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 me.

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.

If prompted, 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.

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.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

I typically place my material onto the mat with the good side facing down.

I recommend putting Cricut strong grip transfer paper onto the mat before putting the leather on it. This keeps the mat much cleaner and extends the life of it. Just put it onto the mat with the sticky side up. Then your leather (good side down) will stick to it.

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.

When using a Cricut Explore, 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. Don’t do this with a Cricut Maker because the full mat pulls into the machine, opting crumpling the plastic on the sides.

For faux leather, place the material on the green standard grip mat. For genuine leather, place your material on the purple strong grip mat.

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

Cut the Earrings

cutting leather earrings with a Cricut machine

Before ejecting the mat, look to see that the leather cut all the way through. If it didn’t, you can push the C (cricut logo button) and the Cricut will cut another pass. You can’t do this after ejecting the mat so be sure to check it before you eject.

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.

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.

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.

holding earring hook, ready to put the faux leather statement earring on

Working with Earrings Hooks

It doesn’t take much to put together the first type of 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 and a great gift for anyone that likes to DIY.

The jump ring tool and pliers below come in the kit linked above.

Decide if you’ll use jump rings on the fish hook.

If you only have a single layer in your earring , you can chose to put the earring component right onto the opening at the bottom of the hook. If your components are too thick or you’d simply prefer to have more of a dangle, you can use jump rings. I’ll start by showing you how to put the earring components directly onto the hook.

If you want to put your earring directly on the the bottom of the hook, take a close look at it and figure out which side is the side that isn’t connected.

Place some 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.

Using Jump Rings

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

If you want to add jump rings, first decide which size of jump rings you want to use. A 4mm jump ring is good if you only have one item or a couple of thin items. A 6mm jump ring will hold a bit thicker material. Gather up a couple of jump rings in the size you need.

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.

I like to start by putting a jump ring onto the hook and then close the jump ring. I do this before I even begin to put the earring components onto a jump ring.

Put earrings and hook into a jump ring.

Then I open another jump ring and put the earrings onto the open jump ring.

After putting the earring onto the jump ring, I add the hook, making sure it is facing towards the back.

Using the pliers and the jump ring tool, close the jump ring.

And that’s it! This leather bar earrings diy is finished.

If you enjoy making diy faux leather earrings, check out my other posts below.

Everyday Earrings DIY

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

Valentine’s Day Earrings

St. Patrick’s Day Earrings

Winter-Themed Earrings DIY

Christmas -Themed Earrings DIY