Making Leather Earrings with Silhouette Cameo 4

 

I'd never imagined that making leather earrings could be so much fun and so quick for a project. I am not sure how many pairs I made, but I will tell you that they are surprisingly light - most of the earrings I made are around 2" tall and 1" - 1.5" wide. I'm not a fan of enormous earrings - I don't like them hitting my collar or getting caught in my hair - so I tried to keep them relatively small. 

The Synthetic Leather

For my earring-making adventure, I purchased the "SGHUO 30pcs Leather Earring Making Kit Include Faux Leather Sheets Glitter Metallic Leather Sheets and Tools for Earrings Craft Making Supplies" from Amazon. In addition to 30 different pieces of synthetic leather that measured slightly larger than dimensions given, it also came with some earring hooks, jump rings, pliers, thread snips, tweezers, bag, and a "jumper opener". 

• I really liked the synthetic leather assortment - good selection of colors and descent quality product.
• I am not a fan of glitter, so all I can say is that I was relieved that the glitter does NOT shed from the product. But if you like glittery stuff these no-shed glitter sheets will dazzle you. The metallic sheets have a bit of shine to them. The leopard prints are a thinner more plastic like material with lines carved in them reminiscent of fur. 
• The little bag is a reinforced plastic bag with a zipper. It is just the right size to hold the leather pieces and keep them reasonably organized. 
• I wasn't impressed by the tweezers - I think it's two pieces of stamped metal attached together at the top. They certainly are not for fine tweezing work as the points are rounded and much larger than expected. I tried using them for weeding vinyl, but had to switch to the tweezers that came with my serger to actually be able to grip the vinyl the way I wanted to grip it with the tweezers.
• The thread snips are about the same as other thread snips of similar design - OK in theory, but don't expect them to be super effective. The can cut threads, but were challenged by the leather. I'm not sure why they were included in the package, but there they were. 
• The pliers are regular jewelry-making pliers and work well for opening and closing jump rings. I had another pair of similar pliers but have mis-placed them, so it's nice to have pliers in my Silhouette Cameo tools pile. 
• The "jumper opener" is a ring with slots in it which you wear on the tip of your finger and use to help hold the jump ring while opening or closing it in theory. I either haven't mastered the art of using the device or something because the jump rings never stayed in the ring's grooves long enough for me to use it to hold anything. It's big enough to wear as a pinky ring, but I believe it's meant to be worn near the tip of the index finger of your non-dominant hand. 
• The earring wires and jump rings set consists of 5 colors: gold plated, silver, steel, black and a dark gray color metal. Color selection : awesome. Metals quality: meh. I liked the idea of having a good selection of different colored earring wires to allow color coordination between the wires and the synthetic leather pieces. I found several wires missing their coil and ball. I also had one set of wires that were intertwined in a strange enough way that I could not separate them. Several of the earring wires had such delicate metal that the loop at the bottom of the wire broke off when I handled it. My ears are sensitive (pierced over 35 years ago) and so I noticed that the back ends of the wires scratch against my skin and certain color wires made my ears itch a little bit. Usually the itchy ears indicates that the wires are not pure but rather are plated with one metal but have another as the main metal - one often sees this with cheap gold ear wires which have gold plating and a nickel interior. 

Summary

All in all, I think the set was worth what I paid. That is, I got my money's worth with all of the pieces of synthetic leather, especially since they were a smidge larger than dimensions given and are of reasonably good quality relative to the price paid. The little zippered bag is great for storing the leather so it doesn't wind up in a messy pile. So even ignoring the other items included in the package, I'm satisfied with what I paid.

Wires

If you have sensitive ears like me, stick with the silver and steel wires. You can test the other ones to see if they bother you, but be forewarned that the other wires are similar to the really cheap earrings we've all tried and found we could not wear. I can't guarantee that the silver and steel looking wires are what I'm calling them, but I can say that my ears are OK with them. The gold, brassy and black wires slightly irritate my ears, so test all 5 types to determine your ears' opinion of them and judge accordingly. You may have to find your own ear wires that work for you. 

Machine Settings

I adjusted my auto-blade settings slightly from the default settings for leatherette. The lesser blade depth did not cut through, and I found the higher force helped push the blade down into the material. I also chose a slower speed to ensure the blade had time to cut. The settings worked for me and cut through all the leathers pieces with nice clean cuts. 

• Force: 33
• Speed: 3
• Passes: 2
• Blade Depth: 8

I read on some web pages that you should cut synthetic leather with the pretty side down. I tried that on a few pieces, but found it cut better pretty side up. 

One word of caution: never cut glitter materials glitter side down because the glitter will stay on your mat and reduce its stickiness.

Be sure to use a relatively new mat that's very sticky, especially if the design has a lot of fine details. After I learned about reducing the stickiness of the mat by putting glitter synthetic leather glitter side down, I had several accidents that ruined a few pieces of synthetic leather because it came unstuck from the mat and got all bunched up. If your material comes unstuck from the mat and starts folding up under the cutter, immediately hit the "pause" button (looks like a sideways = sign), and remove the mat. Check the blade to be sure nothing got stuck in it, and check the machine to be sure all little pieces that came off the material have been removed from the machine bed. 

If your mat is losing its stickiness and you don't have new mat, you can use masking tape to hold the material down along the top and sides. This will work OK for simple shapes, but any with a lot of interior cutting may still wind up lifting off the not so sticky mat. Sometimes the cut will turn out OK even with a little lifting, but it won't look as nice as one that stayed stuck to the mat the whole time.

Earrings!

I made a pair of flower shaped earrings from the pink "fine" glitter material.

I used a free SVG from Design Bundles called "Flower-3.svg" to create them. The background is a plain brown synthetic leather piece. 

 

This is a two layer earring. I am illustrating it in the top earring by swinging the red teardrop away from the white one. This design came from a set of free cut files from "SewSimpleHome.com" 

This was a second design from the set of free cut files from "SewSimpleHome.com". Again, the white is a separate cut from the navy blue piece. I like the look of multiple layers. The background is the glitter "leather" from our leather set mentioned earlier.

This is an example of using both the very nice brown leather layered upon the leopard print material. The top earrings have the layers separated and the bottom illustrate what they look like when layered. The jury is still out as to whether I shall permanently separate them into single layer earrings because I'm not sure I like the color combination of that brown with the leopard print. The cut files for the earrings are here. The earrings are sitting on a piece of yellow glitter synthetic leather from my collection.

Butterfly in circle. I found this one at Craft House SVG, but the little details were a pain to weed out.

 If I had to do it again, I would have set the cutter to cut deeper or the pressure higher. I also would have used a new mat that isn't covered in glitter.

One important note that goes with this design: carefully remove the cactus from the inside of the other section because the cactus can be worn on its own. In fact, always check the shapes being weeded out when making earrings from leather because the negative spaces you remove can sometimes be used as their own designs.

This was a free design from Hey Let's Make Stuff of the Harry Potter "Deathly Hallows" symbol. Fun earrings. Default size is about 2.75", so next time I would make them smaller. 

These are made from the heavier glitter synthetic leather. I drew the teardrop design on the back of the material and cut with scissors. I wouldn't ask my Cameo to cut this material because the plastic-y glitter could damage the blade.

Showing back of the above glitter earrings. You can see the pen line where I drew the teardrop. The blue ones are larger and I don't like them as much as the pink because I think that the blue ones are a bit large for me. They may be fine for other people, but not my personal preference. Also, hand cut earrings don't come out as perfectly symmetrical as machine cut earrings.

Another example of a cut out design - the star - which can be used on its own as an earring, plus another double layer earring design with the cut out star being highlighted by the background blue piece. This earring file came from Amy Romeu's DIY Cricut Patriotic Earrings post.

I found that the easiest way to store my leather earrings was hanging them on a metal coat hanger that I am not using for anything else. It's wide enough to separate them so I can see each design. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that they will all gather to one side or the other if the hanger is bumped. Some may also fall off when you are pulling off the earrings you want to use for the day, so remove them slowly to avoid having to search for fallen earrings. 

HAPPY CRAFTING!!