A Twelve Dancing Princesses Tree

This year as I was contemplating my holiday decor, I decided I wanted to add a Christmas tree to the dining room. I spent a bit of time pondering what sort of theme the tree should have, but really with the mural on all four walls of that room, it was an easy decision…

I needed a Twelve Dancing Princesses fairy tale tree.

I pictured branches of gold, silver, and diamond from the story. Ornaments the color of the night sky. A gossamer ribbon to represent the farm boy’s invisibility cloak.

But ultimately I knew that if I was going to give a full nod to the fairy tale, there was one more thing I needed: I needed shoes. Slippers fit for princesses that could be worn through in one night.

I used a tutorial and template online (shrunk down significantly for my purposes) by Artful Affirmations, and printed out different tiny-patterned wallpapers online, layering the template over the same sheet of pattern printed paper.

I carefully cut out the shoe pieces, and used a glue stick for the connecting sections. I’d like to say I did it gracefully or skillfully, but the first few were very very difficult. These shoes were tiny, and fiddly, and trying to get flat paper to curve and mimic three dimensional shoes isn’t easy, especially at this scale.

But oh, what fun it was too once the basic shoe was done to figure out how I would decorate them, with pearls and feathers and small bits of broken jewelry, carefully attached with Elmer’s glue.

Each pair of shoes took a fair bit of time, so I only made enough for half of the princesses so far. In future years I’d like to finish by making the other six, and I already have plans to add little flickering battery operated candles to the tree for the princesses to light their way through the night forest. But for now? I’m really happy with this first rendition of my fairy tale tree. I hope you enjoy it too.

Below is a tour of the tree from my holiday house tour if you want to see it in even more detail. We leaned heavily into the enchanted forest theme with the rest of the room, putting out unicorn plates and getting an Aurora Borealis projector for the ceiling of the room.

If you could theme a tree to any fairy tale, what would you choose? I know I created this one, but I’d love the chance to make a whole room and holiday decor themed to Beauty and the Beast too.