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Sometime simple holiday earrings are best, and that was my goal when I designed these Faux Leather Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings. They are so easy to make with just faux leather and a Cricut! You can make them with a Cricut Maker, Maker 3, Explore Air 2 or Explore 3, or even the Cricut Joy.

This SVG is included in my Christmas Earrings Event SVG Bundle – you can learn more and get it here.

I also have the earring SVG template for sale individually in my shop – the link is in the Materials section below.

So if you’re ready to try making these Faux Leather Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings with a Cricut, let’s get started!

How to Make Faux Leather Connected Christmas Tree Earrings with a Cricut

For a printable version of the text portion of project instructions, click here.

STEP 1 – Get the Earrings SVG Template

You can get the Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings SVG template included in the 25 Days of Cricut Christmas Earrings Event Bundle here or from my shop here. You’ll receive an order confirmation email with a link to download the SVG after purchasing.

Save the zipped folder that downloads to your computer. You’ll need to unzip or extract the folder FIRST so you can upload the Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings SVG file to Cricut Design Space.

STEP 2 – Upload The Earrings SVG Template to Cricut Design Space

Click on Upload Image, then browse to where your unzipped file SVG is located on your device.

Click on it to upload it to Design Space. You’ll see a preview of the Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings SVG on the screen. Click the UPLOAD button.

Then select the SVG from your Recent Uploads row and click Add to Canvas.

There will be two versions of each of the earring SVGs – one with pre-cut holes and one without.

For this project, I recommend using the “with holes” version since the earring shapes are layered together. For the earrings to sit nicely together when layered, you need the holes in the same spot on each earring. Even if the Cricut doesn’t cut the holes all the way through, it will make a mark so you know where to finish making the hole with a 1/16″ hole punch or sharp object.

Use the “no holes” version if you are resizing the design or you plan to punch all the holes manually with a hole punch.

Once you’ve decided which version you want to use, delete the other pair of earrings. You will need to ungroup both versions from each other first before you can delete.

Your canvas in Design Space should now look like this.

Since both layers in this project will cut from faux leather, we can save time by having the Cricut cut both layers on the same cutting mat. If you aren’t interested in trying this trick, you can just proceed to pressing the Make It button and cutting each mat individually.

But if you want to save some time, we can change the shapes to the same color so we can cut both tree shapes from different faux leathers on the same mat.

There are two ways to do this. The first is to draw a box around all the shapes and then choose a color from the Color Picker.

The second way is to use the Color Sync feature (at the top of the right side of the layers panel). Click on Color Sync and you’ll see the layers on the canvas separated by their unique color codes.

Click on one of the layers and drag it up to another colored layer set. This will change the color of the layer you dragged to the same color. Repeat with all the layers until they are all the same color.

When all the shapes on your canvas are the same color, click the green “Make It” button.

STEP 3 – Prepare to Cut Earring Shapes in Cricut Design Space

When Design Space prompts you to choose how you will load your materials for this project, choose “On Mat.” Then click the green CONTINUE button.

If you use the Color Sync technique from the previous step, the mat preview screen will show both tree shapes on one cutting mat.

First, toggle the MIRROR button to ON for both mats in the project. This is because faux leather cuts face down.

Then click and drag the shapes apart from each other and onto distinctly separate parts of the mat. This will allow you room to place the two different pieces of faux leather and have room to tape around each one.

Click the green CONTINUE button to make the material selection.

STEP 4 – Make Material Selection

Note for Explore Air 2 users: Cricut Explore Air 2 users will need to turn the dial to “Custom” before choosing Faux Leather (Paper Thin).

Note for Cricut Joy users: Cricut Joy users should check out my tutorial on How to Make Earrings with the Cricut Joy with more specific instructions for Joy users.

On the Material Selection screen, choose Faux Leather (Paper Thin) as the material setting. If you don’t have this material setting as a favorite, click “Browse All Materials” to search for it and select it.

TIP: I’ll be cutting these earrings from smooth faux leather AND chunky glitter faux leather. The Faux Leather (Paper Thin) setting is the one I’ll use for both materials. The trick to getting the thicker chunky glitter faux leather to cut all the way through is to repeat the cut. I’ll show you how in the next step.

Then select “More” from the Pressure dropdown menu.

Now it’s time to prepare the faux leather mat to cut.

STEP 5 – Cut the Faux Leather Mat

NOTE: I didn’t put a backing on these faux leather earrings in this tutorial to keep it as short as possible. But I do have a post here and a YouTube video here that demonstrate four ways to put a back on faux leather earrings if you want to learn more.

I’m using printed smooth and chunky glitter faux leather, but you can use the faux leathers of your choice.

Cut two pieces of faux leather just slightly larger than the sizes shown in the mat preview screen. You can use your mouse and hover over the mat preview on the left hand side to remind yourself of the placement for the different shapes that will cut.

Since we are using chunky glitter faux leather for one of the earring layers, we are going to take an extra step before placing the materials down on the purple mat.

The chunky glitter will cut face down, so I use strong grip transfer tape – placed sticky side UP – on my purple mats to protect them from glitter residue when cutting.

Trim a piece of Cricut Strong Grip Transfer tape to a size slightly larger than the chunky glitter faux leather piece.

Peel away the transfer tape backing and place the transfer tape STICKY SIDE UP on the purple mat in the location the chunky glitter faux leather is going to cut.

Then place the glitter faux leather glitter side down on the transfer tape and press all over with your fingers.

Place the smooth faux leather pretty side down on the other area of the mat. Tape the faux leathers down on all sides with blue painter’s tape.

Make sure the white “star wheels” on the roller bar are pushed off to the side so the wheels don’t make indentations in your material.

Load the mat into the Cricut by lining up the mat with the guides and pressing the double arrows button. The machine will pull the mat into the machine.

Press the C button to begin the cut.

After the cut is complete and before unloading the mat, use a weeding tool to carefully lift the edge of the faux leather shape to see if the cut was complete.

It’s quite likely the smooth faux leather will have cut all the way through, but the glitter faux leather did not. I repeated the cut three times for this chunky glitter before it cut all the way through.

To repeat the cut, BEFORE unloading the mat, press the C button again. On the Cricut Joy, the option to rerun the cut will be on the screen in Cricut Design Space.

When the shapes have cut all the way through, unload the mat and remove the earring shapes. You can trim any stray fuzz or the hole with small curved scissors.

Use a sharp weeding tool to poke through the earring holes.

If you want to color the white edges of the faux leather to match the color of the front of the material, you can use a color coordinated Sharpie marker to color the edges.

If they didn’t cut completely, use a 1/16″ hole punch to punch the earring holes. If you use a hole punch for a layered earring design like this one, it’s important to layer the earring shapes and line them up before punching the holes so the earrings lay nicely together.

STEP 6 – Attach the Jump Rings and Earring Hooks

Now it’s time to and add the earrings hooks.

You’ll need 2 jump rings, earring hooks, and two pairs of flat nose pliers. I used 6mm jump rings.

I like to twist the bottom loop of the earring hook 90 degrees first so the faux leather earrings hang straight.

For more details and step by step instructions on how to do that, you can watch my YouTube video here.

Then use the two pliers to open the jump rings and connect the faux leather earring shapes to each other, and then to the earring hooks. Close the jump rings tightly to keep the earrings secure.

That’s it! Your Cutout Christmas Tree Earrings made with faux leather and a Cricut are complete! Here’s another pair I made with solid dark green and plaid printed faux leather.

If you made these earrings, I would love to see them! Please share them in my Free Cricut Crafting Facebook group, Get Crafty with Amy Romeu. You can request to join here.

Printable Instructions

Want to remember this? Post this CRICUT FAUX LEATHER CUTOUT CHRISTMAS TREE EARRINGS project to your favorite Pinterest board!

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