Snowflake Faux Leather Earrings

These diy earrings feature an intricate snowflake cut that turned out beautiful!

These snowflake faux leather earrings are perfect for the winter season. They’re a basic stacked teardrop earring which is cute with just about every outfit.

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Check out my favorite diy earring essentials list on my Amazon storefront here!

DIY Earring Essentials

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
I used the following faux leather for this project.
- 10 piece faux leather kit or Amazon assortment of faux leather
- Cricut faux leather – black pebbled faux leather
- Cricut faux leather – sapphire, currently out of stock on Amazon

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.
Cricut Cutting Mats – You need new or very sticky cutting mats.
- Bulk contact paper
- 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)
Small 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 Aleene’s fabric glue
Heat and Bond
Strong Grip Cricut Transfer Tape
Cricut Transfer Tape, Standard Grip
Earring Backs and Earring Cards
Plastic bags for earrings

I’ve linked my YouTube video on this project below.

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 snowflake faux leather earrings, I used the following SVG file:

You can by the full bundle at: winter teardrop earring SVG bundle from cutcraftdiy.com

Or you can buy just the snowflake earring file from cutcraftdiy.com

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

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

Insert the earring cut file image.

Once you’ve opened a new canvas, upload the cut file for this project, using the upload icon on the left and navigate to the file on your computer.

I always recommend adding tags when uploading new files. If you think you’ll make a lot of earrings, add tags like “earrings” and “snowflake.” This makes it much easier when you’re looking for the file in the future.

After uploading the SVG file, insert it 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 “uploaded.” To do this click on the images button until the menu below appears. Then click on Ownership.

Then click on Uploaded.

Select the cut file you want to use. Then, click on the insert image button in lower, right-hand corner.

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.

making faux leather earrings on a Cricut

This is what the file for our snowflake faux leather earrings looks like after being added to the canvas. This earring comes into the canvas HUGE.

making snowflake faux leather earrings on the Cricut machine

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. An earring size is a personal preference, but here are some general dimensions.

Small teardrops – 1 1/2 inches
Medium teardrops – 2 inches
Large teardrops – 2 1/2 inches

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

For this project, I’m going to create an earring with a 2.5″ height. You can modify that number if you want your earrings bigger or smaller.

Hide Any Necessary Elements Using the Contour Button

You need to modify the image just a little bit.

First, duplicate the snowflake image so that you have 2 of the images on the canvas. Do this by clicking on the image and then clicking on the Duplicate icon in the upper right-hand corner.

Use the Contour Button to Hide Elements, as needed

Click on one of the snowflake teardrops and then click on the Contour button in the lower right-hand corner.

You need to hide the snowflake element so that you have a plain teardrop earring (that you can use for the back earring). To do this, click on the snowflake. The shaded images are the ones that will be hid. Note: the circle is the hole of the earring.

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.

Sometimes, the components are grouped together so you have to Ungroup them before you can change colors. (The Ungroup button is in the upper-right-hand corner.

It isn’t necessary to do that for this snowflake faux leather earrings project because nothing is grouped. We can just go ahead and change the color of the earring piece to whatever color we’re using for our faux leather. Click on the color box as shown below.

I changed the colors so that the front color would be blue and the back would be white.

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 going to cut two additional teardrops so that I can glue my back pieces back to back with another piece of faux leather. I highlighted the teardrop and clicked Duplicate two more times.

MAKE IT

Once your mat has all the earring components ready to cut for your snowflake faux leather earrings, click on the Make It button to cut your snowflake faux leather earrings.

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

Mirror your design, if necessary

Since the good side of your leather will almost always go onto the mat facing down, click on each mat where the material is facing down and click mirror. If the cuts on your mat are symmetrical it really doesn’t matter, but it’s probably a good idea to go ahead and click mirror any time your material faces down, as a good practice. Notice that the Mirror button is turned on and is green below.

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

f you’re using a Cricut Explore with a dial, turn your dial to custom. If you have a Cricut Maker, you can skip this step.

Select the right material from the materials menu in Cricut Design studio.

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

If you’re using Cricut faux leather, choose the Faux Leather (Paper Thin) option. The Cricut icon on the left indicates that the setting is for a specific Cricut material product. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the material, click on Done.

I’ve found that when I’m using a non-Cricut faux leather or a sheet of cork that is 8mm-1mm thick, the Shimmer Leather option normally works best. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the chosen material, click on Done.

If you’re using genuine leather, select either the Genuine Leather or Metallic Leather option. Metallic leather is a little bit thicker so it is important to select that if you’re using it. Once the green arrow appears to the left of the chosen material, click on Done. I also tend to use the Genuine Leather option when I’m cutting double-sided faux leather due to the thickness of the material.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can cut faux leather, faux suede, cork, and leather on the Cricut Explore Air and the Cricut Maker. When cutting Cricut’s faux leather, cork 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. Make sure when you buy a deep cut blade that it will work for your machine. Some deep cut blades only work with the Cricut Explore.

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

The approach you use to place the material on your mat plays a big role in your material cutting success.

How to get the material to stick to mat?

Using an extremely sticky mat is one of the most important keys to get a good cut in the material. Some people attach the material to the mat with painter’s tape. I’m not a big fan of this because while it keeps the leather down on the edges, this approach doesn’t help the hold on other parts of the leather. For this reason, you won’t see me use tape very often.

That said, I always use tape any time I am cutting chunky glitter faux leather and fine glitter faux leather. I do this because the glitter faux leather will not stick to the mat, regardless of how sticky the mat is.

Regardless of the material type, I always start by putting transfer tape on my mat. This approach keeps my mat clean and it also holds the material down really well (with the exception of glitter sheets) because it’s super sticky .

Before placing my faux leather on my mat for this snowflake faux leather earrings diy, I recommend cutting a piece of transfer paper the size of your material and put it on the mat.

How to put materials onto mat

I normally put faux leather onto the mat with the good side facing down. However, I don’t like to do this when cutting more soft, textured leather, cork faux leather, or printed leathers.

There is nothing worse than buying beautiful printed leather and pulling it up from your mat to find that some of the print has pulled off. For this reason, I’ve begun to place these items (printed leathers) onto my mat with the good side facing up. But beware, if you don’t have transfer tape on your mat you will leave a BIG mess behind.

For glitter faux leather, I place my faux leather glitter sheet onto the mat with the glitter side facing down (on top of the transfer tape) and then tape the piece of glitter faux leather onto the mat.

Using a Cricut Brayer

After placing the material on the mat, I always use a Cricut Brayer roller to press it nicely onto the mat. Again, getting a good stick of the material onto the mat is SUPER important for a good cut.

making diy faux leather earrings in Cricut Design Space

Making Earrings Two Sided

The back of some materials 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.

There are two approaches I take to do this.

Sometimes I cut the earrings and then glue them back to back. To do this, I glue two earrings together using either Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue or Aleene’s Fabric Glue.
I adhere two pieces of faux leather or cork sheets together using Heat n Bond BEFORE I cut the leather. This is my new FAVORITE way to work. By gluing them together before I cut, my cuts are beautiful and it saves me a ton of time.

Trim any felt, fuzz, or glue from the earrings.

Using a pair of leather 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.

This cut file already has holes so you don’t need to put holes into the earrings.

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 and punches larger holes (2mm is the smallest) . Here is an option for a smaller hole leather punch (on this one 2mm is the largest hole it punches).

Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your diy 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.

Put earrings and hook into a jump ring.

We’re almost done with our snowflake faux leather earrings.

Open another jump ring and put the earrings onto the open jump ring.

After putting the earring onto the jump ring, 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! Your snowflake faux leather earrings are finished!

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

Everyday Earrings DIY

Sports Earrings DIY

Football Earrings – Teardrop with football cut out
Stacked Football earrings
Chiefs Football Teardrop Earrings
Heart Chiefs Teardrop Earrings
Arrowhead Shaped Chiefs Earrings
Chiefs Arrowhead on Teardrop Earrings