Crystal Beaded Leather Leaf Earrings

Make your own Leather Leaf Earrings using upcycled leather. We are enjoying the leather earring trend. Have you seen the gorgeous Leather Leaf Earrings Joanna Gaines wears? Love them! So we decided to make our own leather earrings. We started by looking for just the right leather. We wanted soft pliable leather with a gold hue. We found some craft leather scraps on Amazon, but they were a little spendy. So we went to the thrift store. Bingo! We found a gold leather clutch handbag for $4.99! See how we turned it into these pretty Leather Leaf Earrings below.

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How To Make Crystal Beaded Leather Leaf Earrings

Materials

Gold leather, 2″x4″
2 Jump rings, 7mm, gold
2 Headpins, 24-gauge, gold
2 Nugget beads, 3mm, gold
24 Crystal rondelles, blue, 3mm
2 Earring wires, gold

Tools

Chain-nose pliers
Round-nose pliers
Wire cutters
Scissors
Awl or bead reamer

Steps

1. We started by looking for the right piece of leather and found it in this gold leather clutch purse for less than $5 from Goodwill! We simply cut the leather away from the hardware and wound up with some great pieces! We only needed a two-inch by three-inch rectangle for the leather earrings, so we saved the rest for future projects. You can find leather scraps at craft stores, too. Michaels has a nice leather craft section.

2. To get started, cut two leaf shapes from the leather. You can draw a freehand leaf about one inch wide and one and a half inches tall to use as a template or print ours at that scale. (Right click on the image to download.)

3. Next feed 3 crystals onto a headpin followed by 1 gold nugget bead. Then feed on 9 more crystals.

4. Make a wrapped loop in the headpin by grasping the headpin wire above the last bead using the round-nose pliers. Bend the wire over the pliers 90 degrees. Reposition the pliers to the top of that bend. Pull the tail of the wire around the pliers to make a partial loop. Reposiiton the pliers so the bottom jaw is in the loop and pull the wire around the rest of that way to complete the loop.

5. Grasp the loop across with the pliers, then pull the tail around the headpin wire between the loop and the crystals to make two wraps. Trim the end of the wire with the wire cutters.

6. To assemble the earrings, make two holes in the top of the leather . To do this, fold the leaf lengthwise and use the bead reamer or awl to make a hole that goes through both sides of the leaf about 2.5mm from the outside edges. Open the jump ring and slide it through one hole from the back. Slide on the wrapped loop of the crystal bar you beaded. Then slide the open jump ring through the second hole around to the back of the leaf. Close the jump ring.

7. Open the earring wire and slide the back of the jump ring into the earring wire loop. Close the earring wire.8. Repeat to make a second earring.

We think these would look pretty in brown leather too. What do you think? Would you wear Leather Leaf Earrings? Leave us a comment below!
Cheers,
Jennifer & Kitty