DIY Heart Bokeh

For those of you that are interested in playing around with some heart bokeh, here are some links and tips to get you started. There were two links I used. I liked this one for the visuals and instructions on how to make the cap that goes over the lens.
instructions

And this one for the information that tells you what size lenses you can use and how big to make the shaped hole.
lens sizes

I made my heart bokeh cap for my 50mm 1.8 lens and it works great! Some people complained in the comments of the above posts about only getting a heart shaped vignette. They either didn't make the hole the appropriate size, or they weren't focusing properly. I made other shaped caps, a maple leaf and a butterfly, but I found that they had a tendency to fracture the bokeh, and I didn't care for that (see photos below).

Materials I used for the heart shaped bokeh cap:
-Black matte scrapbook cardstock
-Exacto type cutting knife
-Regular cutting scissors
-Scotch tape
-Sharpened Pencil
-Ruler w/centimeter measurement
-Campbell's soup can (works great for measuring the diameter of the 50mm 1.8 bokeh cap)

Once you have gathered all your materials, follow the instructions on the links above, and you shouldn't have any problems. But I have one bit of advice, make sure you don't get the bits and scraps, you will be working around, in your camera.

Once you have your cap made, go out and create some wonderful bokeh. A sunny day is best, but anything that creates wonderful bokeh will do. Here are some examples of my favorite shaped bokeh photos...

Here are a few of the only butterfly bokeh photos I liked enough to show.

This was a fun abstract that i cropped out of a photo.

These are a couple maple leaf bokeh photos. They didn't turn out so great, but I posted them because they were taken for a couple of Canadian Flickr friends on Canada Day. I just wanted them to know I was thinking of them : )

Well, that about does it for the shaped bokeh photos. Thank goodness I misplaced my 50mm bokeh file, or else you would be suffering through more of them ;) If you give the shaped bokeh a try and have some questions, just post a comment and I will get back with you as soon as I can.