Pumpkin Pie Faux Leather Earrings - look yummy enough to eat. Where's the Pie?

As I'm preparing for our Thanksgiving adventures, I happened upon Amy Romeu's "How to Make Pumpkin Pie Earrings with a Cricut" article. Perfect choice for me - the ONLY types of Pie that I will eat are Pumpkin Pie and Chocolate pie. I never wear orange, but sacrifices sometimes must be made for the sake of fashion and delicious pies. 

Since I have a Silhouette Cameo 4 instead of a Cricut, the steps needed to create the earrings are only slightly different. The Basic Edition of Silhouette Studio cannot read SVG files; you must have at least Designer Edition to use SVG. I started with Designer Edition because I noticed that the majority of design files available free were SVG (because that is the default file format the Cricut uses). I have since upgraded to Business Edition so that I would have every feature available. 

Once you load the SVG into Silhouette Studio, select all (CTRL-A), and move the pie pieces off of the mat. 

There are two sets of the earrings - this is standard for all of Amy's SVG files - one pair with the hole pre-cut, and one without the hole. I always use the one without the hole so I can punch the hole myself exactly where I want it.  I picked up the Fiskars 1/16" hand punch at JoAnn using a 40% off coupon (ALWAYS try to use the coupons for your JoAnn purchases).

In Silhouette Studio, select the pie slices without holes and move them back onto the mat. 

To save time, you can cut all of the HTV at the same time (provided each has the same cut settings). Select each layer of the SVG and place the motifs in different sections of the mat.

Using the measurements above the mat, determine the size of each piece of HTV or Faux leather that would be required to cover the area of the mat that the pieces fit into. Make the HTV piece slightly larger than the measured size and snip off a piece of that size. The reason you want a slightly larger piece is because it helps ensure that you have a large enough piece to contain the item you are cutting and it provides a slight "fudge factor" for any instance in which the Cameo is not cutting exactly on the spot where you are expecting it to cut. The grid lines on the mat exactly match the grid lines shown in Silhouette Studio.

Depending upon the size of the pieces you cut, you may have to space the design elements further apart so that  you do not overlap any pieces of material. Don't cut the faux leather at the same time as the HTV - faux leather is much thicker and requires a significantly deeper cut than HTV. 

Traditionally, HTV needs to be mirrored but because we are applying it all to the faux leather which will be cut with the back facing up, technically the faux leather has been "mirrored", so non mirrored HTV will be the right way around for the "backwards" faux leather. You should mirror the crust backing HTV because that will be applied to the back of the (mirrored) faux leather. If you forget about mirroring anything, in this case, the pie will turn out how mine did, and since my grandmother's pumpkin pie never turned out perfectly symmetrical, the not totally perfect fit of each piece - compare my pie slices to Amy's pie slices - actually makes it look all that more authentic.

For these earrings, I selected  beige faux leather, antiqued gold HTV for the back, Rose gold foil HTV for the crust trim, orange HTV for the pie, and white glitter for the whipped cream.

Now I want some pumpkin pie!!!

HAPPY CRAFTING and have a Happy Thanksgiving!