This is my first time working with Faux leather and I have got to tell you that it has got sooo much potential! I already have a few great ideas for future projects. Here is the very first for you – Faux Leather credit card sleeve DIY with Cricut Explore Air 2 .
Materials used:
- Faux Leather – color of your choice
- Cricut machine + strong grip mat + Fine point blade
- Fabric Glue or rubber cement or sewing kit
- Design template – Download the template in svg format from below link. You can customize it in illustrator or directly upload into cricut design space and then customize in it.
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Update: We have combined this template with four other exclusive cricut projects and made it available in our store at an incredibly low and fair price. By downloading our digital templates, you are greatly supporting the survival and operation of our studio. We are forever grateful for your contribution. This package comprises the following templates:
- Faux Leather Card Sleeve template – 2 Designs
- Geometric Leather Coaster Template for 4 designs
- No Sew Card Wallet Template
- Imitation Leather Luggage Tag (2 designs) Template
- Travel Hand Sanitizer Template
Each project includes a svg file, pdf/png file and a text file with tutorial link. The step by step tutorial for each of this project is in our blog at https://thenomadstudio.com/category/diy/cricut-projects/
Faux Leather card sleeve DIY
Sleeve Design – 1
Step -1:
The svg file has two different designs. Turn OFF all the layers except the one you wanna cut. Click make.
Material thickness and Cricut setting:
I had two different faux leather materials with different thickness. The peach and lilac ones were thicker than the pearl white next to it. The thickness of the material seems to be a product of bonding two different textured faux leather materials. Whereas, the pearl white had felt fabric on its rear. Check out the below image.
First of all, we need to figure out which side do we want to have on the outer side. Accordingly, place the good side facing down on the strong grip cutting mat. Also, remember to mirror the image before cutting. I used the deep point blade for the thick leather and fine point for thin. The setting I used was ‘Felt wool blended’ on Cricut Design Space. If you don’t have a deep point blade, you can still use the fine pointed blade with higher pressure setting or select the setting with 3X runs. Please do a test cut before you do the actual piece.
Step – 2
Load the strong grip mat with the good side facing down. Highly recommend you to secure the material to the mat with painters tape even if you are using a new mat. Use appropriate blade and start to cut.
Next, unload the mat and peel the leather cuts slowly.
Viola! We got ourselves the two outer pieces. Repeat the step for the middle layer. In my case, its shiny Pearl white faux leather.
After cutting, I preferred less texture surface of the peach color better than the other side. Hence, I chose this as the front face. Even though I had cut the material with the other side up, it ended up very neat with precise cut.
Step – 3
Time to glue them together and keep it under some heavy weight to dry. I used E6000 to stick them together. Many blog sites recommended this glue for faux leather. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for me very well. Not sure why. So for the next design shown below, I used Fabric glue and it worked better. If you know to sew, then that would be the best option to put these together.
Sleeve Design – 2
Repeat the steps 1, 2 & 3 as above with the next design.
Step – 4
In this design I had the text “nomad” over front layer. You can use your name or any text you want. At first, I used heat Transfer Vinyl cut but it ended up as a disaster. The heat from the iron flattened the texture of the leather and ended up looking horrible. Lesson learnt!
In the end, I re-cut the lilac layer and used permanent vinyl text over the faux leather. It looked great.
If you are good at sewing, then go ahead and sew the three sides of the sleeve.
Pin it if you like!
