Split Teardrop Earrings

Make these DIY faux leather earrings with a Cricut machine and your favorite faux leather designs.

These split teardrop earrings are easy to make. Simply connect the two faux leather earring pieces with regular jump rings.

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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 split teardrop earrings can be seen in my YouTube video below. Find written instructions below the additional photographs.

Additional Photos

Features black and white houndstooth, purchased on Etsy
Red textured faux leather, purchased on Etsy

Christmas Faux Leather Kit, purchased on Amazon

Pink and Gray Plaid, Gray and White Floral, purchased on Etsy

Camoflauge faux leather, purchased on Etsy
Cricut black faux leather, purchase on Amazon

What You’ll Need to Make these Split Teardrop Earrings

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
I used the following faux leather for the split leather earrings shown in the feature photo above
- Caramel Texture
- Floral
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 Cricut mats. The green mats work fine for this project because we’re using faux leather.
Basic Cricut Tools

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.

I found the earring cut file for this project on Etsy.

MiPaLow – Split Teardrop

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project

Start a new project to make your split teardrop earrings by clicking on the + icon.

making faux leather earrings on a Cricut

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 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.

Insert image for split teardrop earrings into 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 the split teardrop earrings look like when they’re brought onto the canvas. They measure at about 2.5″ tall when they’re inserted onto the canvas.

split teardrop earrings on Cricut canvas

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 3/4 inches
Large teardrops – 2 1/2 inches
Medium leaf – 2 1/4 inches
Large leaf – 2 1/2 inches

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

For this project, I’m leaving the earrings at the size they’re already set at when you insert them. You can adjust your size by selecting the image and then typing your preferred height into the height 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.

With this file, you have to change the color of at least one of the parts of the earring (the top or the bottom) because the file is set up with both pieces being the same color. If they’re the same color, they’d cut on the same sheet of faux leather.

You’ll need to Ungroup the image first. Select the image and then click on Ungroup.

Ungroup image elements by selecting them and then clicking on the Ungroup button

To change colors, select the image and then change the color where the arrows indicate below.

diy faux leather earring, split teardrop earring

Duplicate images, as needed

Now it’s time to duplicate your images. It’s easiest to duplicate when your image components are grouped. Left click and a draw a square around your earring components and click on the Group button.

Group elements of the diy earring together using Group

Then click on your teardrop earring and click Duplicate in the upper right-hand corner to make your second earring.

Duplicate the split teardrop earrings on the Cricut Design Space

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 not going to cut additional teardrops.

MAKE IT

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

On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut. Click on the Mirror toggle of each mat if you plan to place your fabric good-side down.

Set the Cricut machine on the right setting.

Turn your dial on your Cricut Explore to Custom. This lets you look at the long list of materials. You will need to select a material for EACH mat.

Click on the Browse All Materials link to see the menu of materials options on your Cricut.

Making snowman faux leather earrings on the 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.

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.

Since this project uses faux leather, you won’t need to change your blade (if you’re currently using the normal fine point blade).

Place your material on the cutting mat(s).

Faux Leather/Faux Suede

Before you put the faux leather or suede 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. The exception to this is when the good side is actually messier than the backside (e.g., glitter faux leather).

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.

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.

Once your material is on the mat, proceed to cut each sheet of faux leather.

Remove faux leather from the mat.

Remove the faux leather from the mat. My earring pieces cut very nicely.

There was one place on the camel color faux leather where a tiny part didn’t cut.

I just used sharp scissors to snip that area.

Trim any felt and/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.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

This cut file already has holes but they didn’t cut through my camel colored faux leather material well.

I first used a Cricut weeder tool to push a hole through the camel colored pieces.

poking hole in faux leather earring with Cricut weeder

When my earrings don’t have holes, I use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy faux leather earrings.

I ended up using this to punch the holes in the camel colored faux leather to get nicely cut holes.

punching hole in diy faux leather earring with leather punch

Gather necessary earring components and tools to finish your the split teardrop 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.