Colorful Autumn Leaf Earrings (Tutorial)

by Rena Klingenberg.

This simple earring tutorial is fun for people of all ages.

It involves colorful felt Autumn leaves – which you can make yourself using my leaf template, or get pre-made felt leaves from a craft store or dollar store.

I added metal eyelets to my leaves – but the eyelets are optional, if you don’t want to do that step in this project.

Supplies:

• 2 colorful felt Autumn leaves, in a size that would make good earrings.
  My leaves measure about 1.75 x 1.75″ (4.45 x 4.45cm).
  The thicker and sturdier the felt, the more durable the finished earrings will be.
  • Pre-Made Felt Leaves: Find them in craft stores, dollar stores, and possibly floral suppliers in late Summer and early Fall.
  • Make Your Own Felt Leaves: Get “stiff felt” at a fabric store and download my free, hand-drawn Leaf Template page to cut out your own leaf shapes.

  I bought my pre-made leaves in a craft store. The leaves have a thick felt material on one side, and a glitter-encrusted surface on the other side.
  I’m using the felt side of the leaves:
  

• A pair of earwires.
  I’m using copper earwires to bring in more Autumn leaf color.
  My earwires are from my Easy Fancy Earwires Tutorial:
  
• 2 large jump rings (mine are 10mm size),
  plus 2 small jump rings (mine are 5mm size):
  
• Flat nose and chain nose pliers to twist your jump rings open and shut.
• Punch – you’ll need some way to punch a hole in your fabric leaves:
  • If you aren’t attaching metal eyelets to your leaves, you should be able to use a small-hole (1/16″) paper punch to punch your leaves.
  • If you are attaching metal eyelets to your leaves, use a punch that’s the right size for your eyelets.
    My eyelets are 1/8″ size, so I’m using the 1/8″ bit on my metal jewelry punch:
    
• Some way to reinforce your punched holes in the leaves.
  • If you aren’t attaching metal eyelets to your punched leaf holes, you should use white glue or fabric fray-check to reinforce the edges of your punched holes.
  • If you are attaching eyelets to your punched leaf holes, you’ll need 2 metal eyelets to reinforce the holes you punch in the leaves:
    

    I bought a box of hundreds of these 1/8″ (3.175mm) eyelets in various colors, in the paper-crafting aisle at my local craft store:

    

• If you’ll attach metal eyelets to your leaves, you’ll need one of the following:
  • An eyelet setting tool (from a craft store); or
  • A jewelry hammer with a ball end (I’m using the ball end of my chasing hammer), plus a steel jeweler’s block or other sturdy, smooth surface for hammering:
    

How to Make
Autumn Leaf Earrings:

To Make Your Own Felt Leaves:

Download and print my free, hand-drawn Leaf Template page.

Cut out whichever leaf design you prefer from the printed leaf template page.

Lay your paper leaf cutout on your felt as a pattern, and use a super-fine tip Sharpie marker to trace around the pattern on the felt.

Now cut out your felt leaf.

Then make your second felt leaf the same way.

Now you should have a pair of felt leaves (either pre-made leaves, or ones you made):

Punch a hole near the top of each leaf, being careful not to punch too close to any edges of the leaf:

After punching your leaves, they should look something like this:

If You’re Not Going to
Attach Eyelets to Your Leaves:

If you’re not going to attach eyelets to the holes you punched in your leaves, I recommend dabbing white glue or fabric fray-check on the edges of your punched holes to reinforce them.

Let the glue or fray-check dry completely.

Then jump down to “Finish Your Earrings” below.

If You Are Going to
Attach Eyelets to Your Leaves:

If you are going to attach metal eyelets to the holes you punched in your leaves, here are 2 ways to do that:

1. Method 1: Use an eyelet setting tool from a craft store, following the instructions that come with the tool. (Those steps are not shown in this tutorial.)
2. Method 2: Use a jewelry hammer and jeweler’s steel block, as shown below:

Place one of your metal eyelets on your steel jeweler’s block, with the large flat end of the eyelet against the steel block:



Now place one of your Autumn leaves face-down on the steel block, with the eyelet stem threaded through the hole you punched (the back side of my leaves are the glittery side!):



Now use the ball end of your chasing hammer (or whatever hammer you’re using that has a ball end), and GENTLY start tapping on the stem of the eyelet to flatten it out uniformly around the punched hole in your leaf.

It’s better to use a series of gentle taps for this, instead of a couple of big whacks:



Follow the same steps to attach the other eyelet to your second Autumn leaf.

Now your leaves should look something like this:



Finish Your Earrings:

Now use your chain nose and flat nose pliers to twist open all four of your jump rings.

(If you’re new to using jump rings, see my quick tip for opening and closing jump rings.)



Now insert your large jump rings into the holes you punched in the leaves, and then twist the large jump rings shut:



Attach the small jump rings to the large jump rings.

String an earwire onto each of the small jump rings.

Then twist the small jump rings shut:



Now your finished Autumn leaf earrings should look something like this:



Enjoy wearing (or giving) this charming Fall fashion!






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