Painted Feather Leather Earrings

Use leather paint to create beautiful leather feather earrings for any occasion.

These painted feather leather earrings can be created with any leather and small bottles of leather paint.

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Check out my favorite earring essentials on Amazon here!
Check out my favorite earring materials on Amazon here!

Details for making these painted feather leather earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below.

Completed Feather Leather Projects

Below you’ll see several examples of completed earrings, followed by key tips.

My favorite earrings supplies to make these painted feather leather earrings

Leather Paints – Here is the set of 12 colors that I have.
I also use these additional leather paints:
- pearlescent silver
- pearlescent purple
- pearlescent gold
Paint brush set
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
- 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
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
Heat and Bond
Cricut Transfer Tape, Strong Grip
Cricut Transfer Tape, Standard Grip
Earring Backs
Earring Cards
Plastic bags for earrings

DIY EARRING TIPS

Select a feather 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 these painted feather leather earrings, I used an SVG file that I bought in THIS SHOP on etsy.

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

Setting the material correctly is important to get a good cut.

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.

For this project, I’m using genuine leather, so I’ve selected the Genuine leather option.

Be sure to 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. 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 normally place my material onto the mat with the good side facing down, unless I’m cutting a printed leather. In those situations, I place it on the mat with the printed side up to avoid damaging the leather (the print sometimes pulls off when removing it from the mat).

I start by placing transfer paper on the Cricut mat with the sticky side up.

Then I put the leather on the transfer paper.

After placing the material on the mat, you can use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto your mat.

Trim any felt 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 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.

Paint the earrings.

Painting the earrings is the funnest part!

I used these leather paints for this project, along with pearlescent silver, pearlescent purple, and pearlescent gold.

I love my paint brush set. I bought these because I was tired of my paint brush bristles falling out. They work great an no bristles in my projects.

I use Washi tape on my earrings to make straight lines on my painted feather leather earrings.

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.

To work with these hooks, you either need a couple pair 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.

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. This is what I used for my painted feather leather earrings.