Twelve Days of DIY Christmas - Day 3 Bokeh Christmas Tree

I'm back with a new project to share with you!

I found this colorful geometric christmas tree art and thought it would be fun to recreate, except that I wanted to use circles to give the effect of bokeh, or an out of focus christmas tree with colorful lights.

Martha Stewart has this great adhesive stencil film that I thought I would try out for this project.

I rolled out two rows of film and secured it to the work surface. I then traced my tree shape free hand and cut it out with an x-acto knife and cutting board, but scissors would have worked just fine.

I then removed the liner paper and adhered it to the canvas.

I selected the colors I wanted to use, and with round foam brush, which I learned are called "spouncers," I started adding circles to the canvas, a few colors at a time.

I kept repeating the process with different colors until most of the area was filled.

I let it dry completely and then came back and filled in and fixed some areas, just using paint and my fingertip. Once I was happy with it, I removed the film, crossing my fingers that there wasn't any bleed-through. There were only a couple places where the contact paper didn't hold up, but considering the texture on the canvas, I knew it could be a possibility so I wasn't too disappointed. In all, the adhesive film did a great job and I'm excited to use it on different surfaces. 

I like the finished outcome, but if I ever did it again I would choose thicker acrylic paint. I used Craftsmart paint, which is cheap, watery paint, because I thought I wanted some transparancy, but in hindsight thicker would be better.