How To Make Beautiful And Easy Faux Leather Jewelry

It’s Carrie again bringing you a fun idea for the upcoming gift giving season, beautiful faux leather jewelry!

It’s ridiculously easy to make and people will be amazed when they find out what it’s made with…Faux Leather Paper.

The first question I know you’re asking yourself…but it’s paper, won’t it tear?  NOPE!  Not with normal wear and tear it won’t.  In fact the leather paper looks best after you’ve abused it!

To get the leather look you soak it in water and scrunch and bunch it all up over and over again.  I think it can easily handle looking gorgeous hanging from a chain around your neck or dangling from your ears.

Supplies Needed:

• Faux Leather Paper
• Cutting Mat
• Hook Tool
• Necklace Chain or Earring Hooks
• Jump Rings
• Foil or Paint (optional)
• Silhouette Store Design ID#124352

Step One:  Design Your Charm

Open up the design you want to use for your necklace charm.  I used the beautiful Spring Leaves design and used the rounder leaf design for mine.  I chose this design because I didn’t need to modify it in any way to have it work.

If you find a design you love but it doesn’t have a good spot for the jump rings to be added you can add a circle cut-out.

Step Two: Size Your Charm

Resize the design to your desired charm size.  I have found that you don’t want to go much bigger than 1.5 in. otherwise it starts getting to be a little too big for a simple necklace charm.

Note: I found printing the design on paper first helped me find the best size before I cut it out on my good paper. Remember to add line weight to have it print properly.

Step Three: Cut Your Charm

Once you are happy with your design it’s time to cut it out!  I wanted to make several at once so I could play with different foiling techniques to see what I liked best so I filled an entire row.

There is a preset cut setting in Silhouette Studio® for faux leather paper.  I always do a test cut to check that first before sending the full design to be cut.  For my well loved blade I needed to increase the blade depth to have a clean cut.  I used these cut settings:

• Blade 8
• Speed 3
• Thickness 33

Use your hook tool to help get those little pieces out

Step 4: Distress Your Charm

The trick to getting the faux leather paper to actually look like leather is to get it wet and then crumple it several times.  I have found letting it soak for a minute in water helps it bunch up easier.  Repeat this process until you’re happy with the results.

Soak:

Bunch:

The results:

Step 5: Embellish and Attach

Now you are fine to stop right here and add your jump rings and attach them to the necklace chain or earring hooks.

I wanted to add a little extra sparkle to mine so I added gold foil splatters to some and rose gold foil splatters to others so I could decide which color I preferred.   You could also use metallic paint to achieve a similar look.

Here is the final product!

What fun shapes do you plan on using for your jewelry?