Making More Leather Earrings

 

I had so much fun making earrings, and quite frankly still have a lot of faux leather left from last time, that I figured it was time to make some more. 

This set is going to a coworker friend of mine who raises chickens and loves Harry Potter. She picked the Blue glitter (bottom layer), metallic rose gold (upper layer) and off white (chickens) for the chicken earrings. The Harry Potter Deathly Hallows earrings were cut in glitter leather using a FREE SVG from Hey Let's Make Stuff.

I used my Silhouette Cameo 4 to cut all of them out. 

I'll walk you through the creation steps for the chicken earrings so you can create your own. 

This is Just a Recipe

Keep in mind that any creature or object may be substituted in for the chicken. Whether it's a dog, goat, horse, cat, mongoose, wine bottle, or sports car, the theory is the same. And, of course, the material colors can be anything you want. This is just a recipe. I am only using this as an example because this is what I made recently. 

Above is a screen shot of the earrings in Silhouette Studio. The glitter faux leather was imported into Silhouette studio. The advantage of adding patterns matching the materials on hand is that it allows you to see exactly what the finished project will look like before cutting into your expensive materials. I highly recommend it, especially for complex projects with many layers.  

Take a photo of the glitter faux leather and crop out the visible background. My photo isn't perfect, but it's good enough to represent the material. 

Next, open the Library in Silhouette Studio by clicking on the Library button. Expand the folders and open the "Patterns" folder. Drag and drop your texture photo into the open area on the right side of the library.

The library status will show "Synching" for a moment or two and then your pattern will be shown along with the other patterns you own. It will now be available in Silhouette Studio for use in your cut files. Simply click on "Design" to return to Design view. Open the fill panel. 

The fill panel has 3 tabs. The first is regular colors, the second is gradients, and the third is the patterns tab. The patterns tab on the fill panel will show the pattern files you have imported into the library below the set of "standard" patterns. I have imported 3 patterns so far. The green colored fill was one available free in the Silhouette Design Store (Design ID 75039), and the other two are uploaded photographs of materials I have. 

Making Earrings

I picked the same teardrop shaped svg file I obtained free from "SewSimpleHome.com" which I used in my earlier foray into earring cutting. I made 2 copies of the solid teardrop, then sized one to be approximately 2" tall and the other approximately 1.8" tall. I applied the glitter pattern to the larger teardrop and a rose pink color to the smaller one. I duplicated the pair of them to make two sets. Since the teardrops are symmetrical, I didn't have to mirror anything. 

When an object is selected, Silhouette Studio displays its outside dimensions. If you zoom in on the mat until the squares are exactly 1" tall on your monitor (measure by holding a ruler up to your monitor), you will be viewing the object actual size. For earrings, this is especially important so you can really see how big they will be. I prefer my earrings about 2" tall. I have made some earrings that are about 2.5" tall, but I don't really like wearing ones that large. 

I printed out the earrings at this stage because I needed to cut the glitter material by hand. That glitter material has glitter pieces that are rather large and I don't want to torture my Cameo by having it cut a material like that. I cut out one glitter oval from the paper, then taped it to the back of my glitter leather and used it as a cutting template to cut out the teardrop. My leather punch easily bit through the top of the teardrop to create the hole for the jump ring. 

Printing out the earrings at this stage also allows you to try them on for size - simply cut out the shape with scissors then hold them up to your ears and look in the mirror. Assess the sizing and adjust based upon your preferences. You could even set up a whole series of different sizes, print them all out and try them on to see what sizes you prefer. 

The Chicken (or other object/critter)

Next, I downloaded a chicken silhouette image from the internet - there are plenty to choose from - simply do an image search for "chicken silhouette" using your favorite search engine and select an image to download. 

There are three ways to add a new image to a project in progress.

• Open Windows Explorer, browse to find the file, then to drag and drop it onto the Silhouette Studio project canvas. 
• Open the "File" menu and click "Merge" to open a dialog to select an image file. 
• Open the image in another application then copy (ctrl-c) it and paste (ctrl-v) it onto the Silhouette Studio project canvas.

Any of the three methods work to bring in an image. I usually use the copy/paste method.

Once the chicken is in Silhouette Studio, click on "Trace" to open the Trace dialog. Click on Select Trace Area then click near one corner of the chicken image. Drag your mouse across the image to create a gray box around it. 

The traced shape will show in yellow. I used "Solid Fill" for this image. Click "Trace" in the trace panel, and the grey box will disappear. Drag the image to the side or delete it. A red cutline for a chicken should remain behind.

Click on the red cut lines to select the chicken then drag it over to the smaller teardrop. Resize the chicken by grabbing onto the white dots on the corners of the box surrounding it and moving them inward until the chicken is small enough to fit in the smaller teardrop.

I found that it looked best when the bird was between 0.80" and 0.90". The chicken size can vary depending upon the shape of the image and your preferences for chicken sizing. 

Before proceeding further, be sure the chicken is selected, then click on "Edit Points". If the image resembles mine - lots of points going around the outline - this bird will make a lot of noise when cutting and may have ragged edges. Turn off "Edit Points" by clicking elsewhere. 

Reselect the bird.

In the main menu, select Object > Simplify. Re-check the image by clicking on Edit Points.

This will be a much better cut. Since the bird's feet, head, and tail feathers have a lot of squiggly shapes, it's OK to have several edit points along there. 

I recommend saving your project after each major step so that if something goes terribly wrong you at least won't have to start all over from the beginning. 

Select File > Save from the main menu. I named my project "Chicken Earrings.studio3".

Turn off edit points and select the chicken. Open the fill panel and choose a color for the bird.

I picked white. 

For the heart, if you have Business Edition or Designer Edition Plus, you can use the drawing tools to create a heart in Silhouette Studio.

If you have Basic Edition or Designer Edition, you will have to locate a heart image on the internet or draw it yourself because the Drawing Tools are not available in these editions (good reason to upgrade!).

Microsoft Powerpoint has a heart shape you can copy & paste into Silhouette Studio (other competing applications should have a similar feature). Just open a new presentation, click on Shapes in the ribbon and locate the Heart among the "Basic Shapes". 

Draw the heart in Powerpoint

The larger you make it, the better it will look. I created one that filled the whole slide. With the heart selected, hit ctrl-c to copy it. Switch back to Silhouette Studio and paste using ctrl-v. 

You can copy anything created in Powerpoint and paste it into Silhouette studio! 

Adjust the heart's size. In the picture above, you can see the Powerpoint heart on the left and the Silhouette heart next to it. You will have to trace the Powerpoint heart to turn it into a cut item just like we did with the chicken image.

After tracing, move the Powerpoint heart away and delete it, leaving the red cut outline heart behind. 

If you check the heart cut line in edit points, it will have a lot of extra points on it. Simplify the heart (Object > Simplify or ctrl-j ) to reduce the points and create a smoother cut.

Open the Fill panel, click on the heart, then click on a red square to color the heart red. Drag the heart over to the chicken and resize it to fit within the bird. If you have the mat zoomed in so that the grid lines are actual size (1"), it will be easier to size the heart. I made mine about 0.146" tall. 

Next, grab the green dot (rotate handle) above the heart and move it to tilt the heart slightly to one side.

I cut out the heart from the chicken, but I don't think it's necessary because if the heart is not cut from the chicken, then it's easier to place on the bird since you don't have to line up the red heart with the cut out shape. 

If you wish to cut out the heart (optional!), move the pink teardrop out of the way, the select both the chicken and the heart. You can do that by drawing a box around them.

Open the Modify Panel and click "Subtract All".

When you move the heart off the chicken, you will see that the chicken now has a heart cutout in it. With the cutout heart, you do have the option of just using the chicken without cutting the small red heart. The pink leather of the teardrop will show through the cut heart.

Make a copy of the chicken and its heart (ctrl-c) and paste it (ctrl-v). 

Alternatively, click on the Copy and Paste icons in Silhouette Menu bar 

With the chicken and heart copy still selected, right-click your mouse over it and select "Flip Horizontally". 

This will mirror the bird and heart. You will now have two chickens that face each other with hearts tilted in opposite directions.

Create Finished Project File

I like to save a copy of the finished project along with the individual cutting pieces so that I can see what the "finished project" should look like after cutting and assembly. Pile the earring pieces - glitter teardrop, pink teardrop, chicken, heart - in order. If one of the upper items winds up underneath a lower item, click on "Bring to Front" to put it on top of the other item.

 

Save your project. It is ready to cut. 

The saved project should look like this: 

Cutting Time

Select everything and drag it all off the mat. 

If you are not using heavy glitter faux leather for the largest teardrop place the two blue teardrops on the mat, load your selected leather on a sticky mat and cut. If you chose to use the heavy glitter leather for the largest teardrop, I really recommend that you cut it using scissors rather than your cutting machine because it is so thick and difficult to cut. That's what I did - print out the shape, tape the printed shape to the back of the glitter leather and cut it out using scissors. 

After cutting (or printing & hand cutting) the large teardrops, move them off the mat and replace them with the small pink teardrops. Since this teardrop will have vinyl attached to it (the chicken), I recommend using a relatively smooth non-glittery leather so that the vinyl will have a good surface to stick to. Cut the pink teardrops.

Repeat the process to cut the chickens using off white vinyl and the hearts using red vinyl. 

No Mat Cutting

In my eagerness to cut the vinyl, I forgot to put the red vinyl on a mat. Thankfully, the Cameo has no problem cutting vinyl without a mat. The only "issue" I had was that the hearts were cut about 1/2" from the edge rather than close to the edge where I had placed them. This can be explained because the Cameo was set for cutting with a mat, and the cut area on the mat is about 1/2" in from the edge.

The proper way to cut without a mat is to open the page setup panel and change the mat from "Auto (Cameo)" to "None". 

The "None" setting hides the mat on the screen and displays just the material with a grid to help with placement. When you switch to Cutting Mat = none note that the margins around the material have moved slightly. The red lines show where the cutting area is on the material. Anything outside the red margins will not cut.

Once the Cameo has cut everything, remove the extra vinyl from around the shapes. I usually take scissors and cut around the shapes so that I don't waste too much vinyl by weeding out large piece that could be used for other projects. 

To finish up the earrings, use transfer tape to pick up the vinyl chickens and adhere them to the earrings, then repeat to place the hearts. 

Pick out your earring wires and two jump rings per earring. Attach the jump rings and earring wires, then wear your chicken earrings with pride. 

HAPPY CRAFTING!