Cut Custom Earrings From Text or a SVG file

I have to admit that I was skipping over the earring tutorials for Silhouette Cameo or Cricut that were showing up in my Pinterest feed. They all seemed to be featuring a similar tear drop shape with cutouts, and that really isn’t my style, so I just kept scrolling.

But then last month a customer from my Etsy shop reached out for some assistance with a cut file, and after we worked through the kinks, she told me she was going to use my file of a Westie head to cut custom earrings for her cousin.

Well, that had never entered my (very vivid) imagination. You could turn just about any image, text or cut file into earrings with a strategically placed hole for the jewelry finding!

And down the rabbit hole I went.

Valentines Day is coming, and that’s a great excuse for whipping up a pair of very custom earrings.

Here are the basic steps – you can find this Love file in my Etsy shop or create something similar with just type. I’m showing this in Silhouette Studio, but Cricut Design Space has pretty similar tools.

Open the file you want to turn into earrings. The basic (free) edition of Silhouette Studio can’t open a SVG file so I used the DXF version included in this design.

Move the letters together so they overlap. To get this to a manageable earring size the overlap has to be pretty tight.

From the Modify menu choose Weld to make one continuous shape.

Skipping this step would let Silhouette Studio think you want the letters cut out individually.

From the Transform menu go to the Scale section and make sure the height and width measurements have the lock icon closed, which makes them resize proportionally. If it’s showing an unlocked icon just click it to change it to lock. Enter a value for the width of the earring – I measured some hoops I have and used that as my guide – I went with 1.25 inches. Click Apply and the artwork will be resized.

Using the ellipse tool, draw a small circle. Draw a second circle that is slightly smaller than the first. That’s going to be the hole the jewelry finding slips through.

Select both circles and then chose the center/center icon from the Align section of the Transform menu. Group (not Weld – this is important) the two circles and then bring them over to the welded word art. Align them so the bottom of the outer circle is slightly below the center of the top of the word art. Ungroup the two circles, and then select just the outer circle and the word art and choose Weld from the Modify menu. Group everything, and then make a second copy.

Move both finished earrings to the corner of cutting area on the screen, and then put your material on the mat. I tested these with very thin plastic, and faux leather, but in the end I decided I really like them cut from card stock. I liked my color choices better, and paper is so affordable I can make new earrings for any occasion.

Send the file to cut, weed off the excess and then slip the jewelry findings into the holes. I found that if I didn’t completely close the loop I could reuse the finding for another pair of earrings when I needed to change things up.

Pin this so you’ll have the easy steps to cut custom earrings on your own from just about any art file.

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