DIY Wood Veneer Earrings

I am so excited to share my first Cricut Design Space Star project in the form of these easy and modern surfer-inspired DIY Wood Veneer Earrings!

If you haven’t heard about this Cricut Design Space Star project, it is a monthly competition between selected bloggers. Each month we are given a category from Cricut, and then our team selects a theme and gets crafty. My team chose The Endless Summer as our theme, which is a surfer movie from the 60s about chasing Summer and the perfect wave. We pulled inspiration and our color palette from the dreamy movie poster. It seemed fitting as Summer is winding down and kids are heading back to school (can I get a high five?). The surfboards from the movie poster kept calling to me, so I decided to make some wood veneer earrings reminiscent of a surfboard using my Cricut Explore. Did you know it cuts through wood? I’d marry this machine if I could. There isn’t much it can’t do.

Now, I’ve gotta confess that his was my first time using a Cricut EVER. The intimidation factor was so high, but it was so much easier than I thought once I actually turned it on. It came with sample projects and materials, and I was up and running and confident in no time!

Ready to get started on this project?

You need a few supplies

• Wood veneer cardstock
• Painter’s tape
• Stain (I used Minwax Wood Finishing Cloths)
• Paint in your favorite colors (I used gold, pink and orange)
• Xyron 1.5″ Sticker Maker with permanent adhesive
• Foam roller
• Earring hardware
• Cricut Explore cutting machine

I designed my surfboard in Illustrator and imported it into Cricut Design Space as an SVG. Super easy process that allows you to use your own images for cutting. They also have a HUGE library if you don’t have Illustrator.

Once my image was loaded, I was ready to cut through the veneer. Yay! Just push the “GO” button, and the Design Space prompts you what to do next.

While you are getting ready to cut, it asks you how many projects you want to make, and that means how many cuts of each image. Since my veneer was very thin, I knew I would be layering several cuts together. So I selected “6” and hit “APPLY”, and Cricut did all of the guesswork for me placing the images to optimize the cardstock.

Next, it prompted me to place the veneer into my machine by hitting the load (arrow) button. Then I set my dial on the machine to cardstock (because my veneer is paper thin) and hit that Cricut logo button to let it do its thing,

Which resulted in a pile of these guys.

Once all of the cuts were done, I peeled them off of my mat and ran each surfboard through a Xyron 1.5″ Sticker Maker. It quickly applies a layer of permanent adhesive to the back. I did that on 10 of the surfboards. Leave two without adhesive.

Then I started sandwiching the surfboards together so that each earring would have six layers of veneer. I took the surfboard that didn’t have adhesive and layered four on top of it, and then put one on the back so both sides were covered with the wood.

The next step was staining. I used Minwax Wood Finishing Cloths and applied a stain to both the front, back and sides of my surfboard. Then I let it dry overnight. I did two coats total.

Now we’re ready for painting! I took painter’s tape and marked off where I wanted my first stripe of color to go. I wanted a thin gold stripe, and then two stripes of pink and orange. Using painter’s tape kept my lines sharp. Paint with the grain of the wood!

Once my paint was dry, I grabbed my  next batch of supplies to add the hardware. I used the Cricut weeder tool (it looks like a dental pick) to poke a hole for my earring hardware. Then I used a bead reamer (the yellow guy above) to gently enlarge the holes.

Once the holes are the right size, insert your earring hardware. That’s it! Now you have some dreamy Wood Veneer Earrings!

THIS POST WAS SPONSORED BY CRICUT. THOUGH THREE LITTLE MONKEYS STUDIO MAY HAVE RECEIVED PAYMENT AND/OR PRODUCTS, ALL OPINIONS ARE 100% MY OWN. I ONLY PROMOTE BRANDS I LOVE!