DIY Leather Jewellery | 3 Simple Earring Designs to Make

I've always loved drop earrings that incorporate simple shapes but that make a bold statement.

For this set of 3 earrings I used leather scraps and faux leather to make simple but eye-catching designs that anyone can try.

And they will each only take you about 15 minutes of actual crafting time!

I hope you enjoy my Instructable :)

Step 1: What You Will Need

- Leather/Faux Leather: I used a mix of both. This mainly came in the form of leather scraps and small samples off Ebay.

- An awl

- Scissors

- An X-Acto knife and cutting mat. A utility knife could be good too if you are using thick pieces of leather.

- Metal ruler

- Superglue

- Invisible thread

- Round items to draw around; I used a coin and a narrow reel of thread. You can use bottles, tubes, coins, jars etc. depending on the size of leather pieces you want to make.

- Jewellery pliers

- Jewellery findings; I used earring hooks, earring posts and jump rings

- Paper

- Pen

Step 2: Geometric Earrings: Cutting Out the Shapes

I drew around the base of a thread reel on my cream piece of leather, using a pen. I did this twice and then cut out the 2 circle shapes.

For the remaining semi-circle pieces, I drew around a coin on a piece of paper, cut this out, and then cut the paper circle in half.

One of these halves I folded in half and cut an even width off the curved edge to produce a smaller semi-circle that has the same curve shape as the larger template.

I used the smaller semi-circle template to cut out 2 pieces from the red leather and from the cream leather, and used the large semi-circle template to cut 2 pieces from the red leather only.

Step 3: Geometric Earrings: Assembly

Use superglue to attach the smaller cream leather semi-circles onto the front of the larger red semi-circles, and leave to dry.

Then place the leather pieces on a cutting mat or scrap piece of wood, and use the awl to insert a hole at the top and bottom of each piece (except for the bottom piece which only needs a hole at the top). Don't put the hole too close to the edge or you may tear the leather.

Make these holes big enough for jump rings to go through.

Then use your jewellery pliers to open a jump ring - using a 'twist' motion - and insert it through the top of one piece and the bottom of the other, then close the ring. Do this to connect all of the pieces.

Instead of a jump ring, you will need to attach an earring hook to the hole at the top of the top piece.

This completes your earrings!

Step 4: Fringed Earrings: Cut Out the Pieces

I drew around the base of a reel of thread onto a piece of black leather, twice, and then cut these 2 circles out.

I then cut out 4 identical rectangles of gold faux leather. These pieces were approximately 3 cm x 6 cm.

Step 5: Fringed Earrings: Insert the Thread

Cut 2 short pieces of invisible thread (no more than 10 cm long) and place the ends of each of these pieces in the centre of 2 leather rectangles.

These thread strands should run lengthwise down the centre of these 2 rectangles, but you only want them to lie in the top 1/3 of the rectangles.

You then superglue the thread ends into place and sandwich them between 2 rectangles.

In summary: Glue the rectangles together in pairs, with a piece of invisible thread sandwiched in between.

Make sure the thread remains central.

Once this is dry, take your scissors and curve the top corners of the gold rectangles. NOTE: Make sure you don't cut the thread!

Then make lots of straight parallel cuts at the bottom of these rectangles to make fringing.

Step 6: Fringed Earrings: Final Assembly

Take your 2 black leather circles and superglue earrings posts to the centre.

But just before you press the post onto the leather circle, lay the invisible thread piece across the centre.

You want to have around 1 cm of thread between the gold leather pieces and the black leather circles.

Leave to dry, and then cut off the excess thread.

Finished!

Step 7: Art Deco Earrings

Draw and cut out your desired shapes from paper. I went for a 3 piece Art Deco design.

To make the template shapes symmetrical, fold the paper in half before drawing & cutting.

Then use an X-Acto knife and metal ruler to cut these shapes out of 3 different colours of leather - on a cutting mat.

My 2 metallic leathers are faux leather, and the brown leather is real.

Then use an awl to insert a hole into the top of each piece.

Use jewellery pliers to open a jump ring and push it through the holes at the top of the 3 leather pieces.

Close the jump ring and then attach an earring hook to the ring to complete your earring!

Repeat to make the other earring.

Step 8: Finished!

And now your can show off your new earrings!

Thanks for reading :)

Step 9: And a Video...

If you prefer to watch a video tutorial instead :)