It's October, so that means it's time to have fun making and wearing Halloween themed earrings. I love having fun earrings because they show up on Microsoft Teams calls with my clients when we do video calls. Since travel is still (mostly) not happening, I find that decorating myself from shoulders up is the way to go. Once clients start wanting me to appear on-site, I'll have to get back to entertaining outfits, but for now, earrings seem to be the thing to do.
All of the earrings I'm showing are made from images that were available FREE in Cricut Design Space (meaning the subscription is not required to use them, nor do you have to pay for them) as of 8 October 2022. I will include links to my Cricut Projects so you can recreate them as I set them up. Otherwise, find the same images in Design Space and generate your own versions.
Ghosts
This project is publicly shared in Design Space. I used free image #M3B6AE131 from Design Space.
To make the project from scratch:
Import design #M3B6AE131, and change the color to white
Resize the design to 1.5: wide. This is the widest most people would want their earrings to be. Of course, they can be any size, but at least test this size to see how it works for you.
Duplicate the ghost. Click on one of the ghosts (if one is not already selected), and click on "Contour".
Contour allows you to turn "off" elements of a design. In this case, click on both eyes and the mouth, then click the "x" in the upper right to dismiss the dialog. You will now have a version of the ghost with eyes and mouth and one without.
Create two mirrored copies of the ghost without eyes & mouth and set the color to Black. This will be the base of the ghost. Create two sets of mirrored copies of the ghost with eyes & mouth and set to white. Those will be your glow in the dark HTV ghosts (as far as I know, glow in the dark faux leather is not available, so if you want the ghosts to glow, you have to make them in glow in the dark HTV).
Cut the white items in glow in the dark HTV and the black items in black faux leather.
Apply the HTV to both sides using the Cricut Easy Press 2 with setting 290 F for 15 seconds.
Other Halloween Beings
You can use my project in Design Space, or create your own version from scratch.
Witch Hat is #M78694D3. Skull is #M7868AE0. Lightning bolt is #M7936445. And Bat is #M3AE536D3.
Rotate the Bat 90 degrees.
Resize each image to 1.5" wide or 1.5" tall as applicable. The final size is your personal preference, but I prefer to have earrings that are no more than 1.5" wide and less than 1.75" tall. For the bat design, don't go too much below 1.5" (wingspan) because the silver veins in the wings will become too narrow and disappear if you do so. Since the bats are hung vertically, you can get away with a slightly larger bat that you would if they were to be hung horizontally.
Lighting bolts
This is the easiest one. Duplicate the lightning bolt and flip one copy so you have a mirrored pair.
Select silver glitter faux leather and cut it to about 2" x 2" (check in cut preview to be sure this is right size for your version. The sizes given are what I cut for my pieces). Cut silver HTV to the same size and adhere to the back of the glitter faux leather using the Cricut Easy Press 2 ( 290 F for 15 seconds).
Put the HTV backed faux leather on your mat with glitter side up and tape down using blue masking tape.
Select the "paper thin faux leather" setting and cut.
Punch a hole in the top of the lightning bolt (around where it seems wide enough to have the hole without compromising the material), and attach two jump rings and an earring wire. I always use two jump rings instead of turning the loop on the earring wire because the cheapo earring findings that I have in my stash always break when I try turning them. The two jump rings rotate the earring design so that it will face forward when you are wearing it.
Witch Hat
To make your own version of the Witch Hat, you will have to do some design editing.
Change the color of the witch hat to purple (you can cut it in any color you wish, but at least for the purposes of the tutorial, set the colors as stated so that it's easier to distinguish between the shapes and the witch hat). Select the square shape and lay it over the witch hat.
I have moved the witch hat to the front so you can see they are overlapping. You can leave the hat underneath it for this step if you don't want to bring it forward. Click on "Slice"
If you separate each of the items, you will have the original purple hat, a black version of the hat, and a negative of the hat in black.
Bring in a shape, such as the triangle and rotate it slightly so it can be placed near the edge of the hat band and be used to remove the non-hatband parts of the image.
Click on Slice, then remove the sliced off pieces.
After welding, check whether there are small slices in the solid hat. There may be some if the hatband was not aligned perfectly with the hat when you welded. I zoomed in to 250% to see the little black line in the hat. If this line remains in the design, your machine will put a little slit in the faux leather, which we don't want because it will weaken the earring.
Close the "Hide Contour" window. You should now have a solid witch's hat plus a separate hat band.
Duplicate the hat band and flip one copy (this will go on the back of the hat). Duplicate the set of hat + two hatbands and flip it so you have a pair of mirror image witch's hats. Delete the original image.
While making this project, I learned why one should always purchase branded Cricut mats. I'd ordered a set of 3 "generic" mats from a vendor on Amazon.
With the tops of the mats aligned, you can see that the grid is about 1/8" higher on the generic mat than it is on the genuine Cricut mat. I drew a black line along the top of the generic mat to show me where the top of the Cricut grid is (because the Joy is calibrated for Cricut mats). Here's a picture of where the hats cut on the generic mat. Fortunately, I had cut the faux leather about 1/2" larger than originally estimated, so that the hats still cut on the faux leather rather than losing the bottom of the hat.
Since the top measurement is off, it means it's difficult to place material correctly on the mat in sections other that at the very top or very bottom, which means I won't really be able to use the whole mat except for the occasional "full mat" size project. I won't be buying generic mats again!! They may have seemed to have saved me money, but will cost me more in wasted materials because the grid does not match what is shown in the mat preview.
Once the cutting is finished, weed away the extra material. Place the HTV hatband on the front of the hat and cover the hats with a teflon sheet. The teflon sheet helps protect your press from sticking to the materials.
I used my Cricut Easy Press 2 set at 290F for 15 seconds.
I like to use my tailor's clapper to cool off the HTV before peeling off the backing. The tailor's clapper is a piece of wood which does a good job of absorbing the heat.
Peel off the backing then flip the hats over and apply the other bands to the back of the hats in the same manner.
Open jump rings using pliers and thread the jump rings onto the earring.
I usually use two jump rings on my earrings so that they will face forward when I wear them.
Skulls and Bats
I made the skulls and bats using techniques similar to the witch's hat.
The bats were the easiest because I could use contour to separate the white lines from the wings. Simply duplicate the bat image after importing then on one copy hide the white veins and on the other copy hide the bat body. The bat was sized so that its wingspan was 1.75". Making it smaller than that can result in the white veins being too narrow to cut properly.
I chose to put the earring holes in the edge of one wing rather than in the center of the head so that the bats hang sideways.
The skulls were made using the same techniques as the witch's hat - use a square image and slice to make a negative of the skull then use shapes to slice the eyes, nose and mouth away from the skull background. Make mirror images of the skull outlines and faces so you have a pair of them.
Happy Crafting!!
