Sports Faux Leather Earrings DIY

Customize these football earrings and soccer earrings with colors of your favorite team.

Soccer has been a big part of my life for the past 15 years. I have attended hundreds of hours of soccer games with our kids, and I’ve bought my fair share of spirit wear for various soccer teams over the year. My newest spirit wear is an accessory, a sports faux leather earrings diy. In this post, I’ll share how I made my football and soccer DIY earrings with my Cricut Explore.

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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!

If you’d prefer to watch a tutorial, see my YouTube video below.

What You’ll Need:

Cricut Machine – I recommend the Cricut Explore Air 2 or the Cricut Maker.
Cricut black faux leather (I love Cricut brand faux leather because it cuts intricate details better than other faux leathers). And you can make a lot of earrings with this role!
Faux leather in the colors of your favorite sports teams. Here is one of the kits that I bought.
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 Mats – You need new or very sticky Cricut mats. The green mats work fine for this project because we’re using faux leather.

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 used an SVG cut file that I bought on cutcraftdiy.com. Here is the single football file. Here is the soccer earring svg link. Here is a bundle that has both of the files.

Pick the materials/colors for your faux leather earrings.

I decided to use a solid black faux leather (from Cricut for my back earring) for the front earring. The fact that I was using Cricut faux leather for such an intricate cut gave me a high level of confidence. Cricut faux leather performs so well because the machine is set specifically for the Cricut materials.

For my back pieces, I chose colors that represented teams. I plan to give the football earrings to a friend as a birthday gift. She is a HUGE Chiefs fan, so I’ll use red and yellow faux leather for teardrops behind those earrings.

For the soccer earrings, I’m using blue and yellow teardrops, my son’s high school colors.

Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project to make your diy faux leather earrings.

Insert the earring cut file image.

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 “sports” or “football.” 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.

Making snowman faux leather earrings on the cricut machine

Tip: to easily find my upload files, I usually filter by uploads.

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

Re-size the earrings, if needed.

It is often necessary to re-size earrings when the file is added to the canvas. The earrings in this cut file come in EXTREMELY big so you will need to re-size them. This one came it at 24″ tall.

To fix it, I just typed 2.5″ into the height field to resize it.

Add the second teardrop earring component to your mat.

Once you re-size the first earring teardrop, add the second teardrop to your mat.

To do this, click the Images button again.

Select the 2nd file and click the Insert Images button.

This is the file that makes the back teardrop earring component.

Re-size second earring component as needed.

Decide if you want the back earring to be the same size at the front one or whether you want it to be a bit larger. Since the sports shape is cut out of the earring, it can be the same size and still look really cute because the leather shows through. I chose to make mine larger because I wanted the color to show around the bottom of the earring as well.

Change earring components to the right color.

Changing the images to the right color keeps things clear when you’re putting different colors of leather and suede 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.

Once Ungrouped, change the color of each earring component.

Confirm sizing is right.

Often, you will do an estimate on the sizing on the back earring so you’ll want to be sure you like how the components layer.

Sometimes when you try to take a look, the front earring component won’t show on the front of the stack.

To fix this, right click on the image that you want to move and you’ll see the menu below. If the image is in the back, you’ll see an option to send it to the front. If the image you’ve clicked on is in the front, it will show an option to send it to the back. An example of that menu is show below (with a different set of earrings).

Making the modification will help you see how the layers work out. And you’re able to see how much of the back earring is peeking out.

Duplicate images, as needed

You will need to duplicate the earring to make the second earring in the pair. To do this, click on the item to select it. Then, click on the Duplicate button in the upper-right-hand corner.

You need to make one copy of the front earring.

Take a look at the back of the back earring to see what the material looks like. Sometimes the back of faux leather isn’t very cute, and sometimes the back of the earring shows. For this reason, I typically cut an extra set of the backs so that I can glue the back pieces, back to back.

MAKE IT

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

On the left you’ll see the different mats that will need to be cut, one for each color of faux leather or faux suede in your project.

Mirror your design, if necessary

If your design isn’t symmetrical (same on both the left and right sides) you will probably want turn the mirror setting on if the good side of the faux leather or faux suede is face down on the mat. That is an easy click on the mirror button for each mat you need to mirror.

Make sure you have the machine on the right material setting.

Turn your dial to custom.

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

When you’re using Cricut brand faux leather, this step is always easy because the settings are standardized and always work well for Cricut products. When using other brands of earring materials (like Hobby Lobby faux leather ribbon) it sometimes requires you to play around to get the setting right. This is sometimes frustrating. When I share my projects I’ll always share the settings that I learn work with the materials I am using for that project. Hopefully this will save time and wasted leather material for you.

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

For the black leather, I chose Faux Leather from the materials options. The Cricut logo at the right means that the specifications are set exactly correct for Cricut brand product.

For the colors of faux leather that are behind the black sports teardrop, I chose the Shimmer Leather options.

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. Note: the faux leather setting does NOT prompt you to move start wheels. But if you’re using faux suede, you will get this prompt.

If you’re instructed to do this, push the wheels to the right. They may be on there tight so put some strength behind it.

Make sure you’re using the right blade.

You can print faux leather, faux suede, and leather on the Cricut Explore. When cutting Cricut’s 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 the material on the cutting mat.

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. The back of these are often felt. This means that it will leave a mess of fuzz when you take it off of your mat if you place it on the mat right side up. For this reason, I place my material on my mats good side down (when they have a felt back).

Also, I like to determine how much of the faux leather or faux suede will be cut. Typically, it is less than 3″ high of material, meaning only about 3″ of the mat needs to be exposed. I then place my plastic 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.

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 onto your mat. I don’t have one of those so I usually use a dough roller.

Continue placing the material (faux leather or faux suede) onto each mat and cutting the faux leather with the Cricut machine.

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 felt. I often cut an extra faux leather or 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 isn’t exposed.

To do this, I glue two earrings together using E6000 glue.

While I didn’t use it for this project I actually prefer to use Crafter’s Pick Fabric glue because it doesn’t dry so fast and I have time to get my earrings situated/lined up better.

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.

Place a hole in the top of the earring.

I normally use a leather punch to put the holes in my diy faux leather earrings when the cut file doesn’t already have a hole. The tool linked above cuts through multiple layers of the earring at the same time. You can also use Cricut weeder tool to put a hole through faux leather and faux suede, but it is best to go through just one layer at a time if you do this.

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 the your earring components onto the jump ring.

Then attach a jump ring to the earring hook. I like to do this because it helps my earrings to face the front versus twisting/sideways facing earrings.

Attach the jump ring that you attached the earring hook to the jump ring that your earring components are on, making sure your hook faces the right direction before closing the jump ring.

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

And that’s it! Your sports faux leather earrings diy is done!

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

Check out my other DIY faux leather earrings projects:

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