I have mounted an Arduino ~2 meters (I believe some have had luck at 3 meters) from the 1st pixel.
You can use ‘none lit’ pixels as repeaters to extend the usable length.
Can run several branches on one Arduino.
A single pixel can be controlled.
Up to many meters, 3 bytes of memory per pixel.
Powering can be from either end of a string.
One could cut 2, 3 or 4 pixels from a strip (maybe tissue paper on top), place them under a translucent clear plastic leaf with engraved veins, go a foot away then repeat . . .
Cut leaves out with a scroll saw or CNC router, sand surface with 600 grit sand paper.
Use heat gun then bend to give them a none flat appearance.
I have not tried this, you should be able to run strings in parallel.
They would light up identically.
(Just tested this, it works well)
Bird lamp on eBay, expensive, thought I might try my had at wood carving.
Neopixel rings?
Been there done that, thought this art piece had some artistic appeal.
Trying to make something that we won’t easily tire of.
I’M think cutting several pixels from a strip will work.
Maybe get 2-3 pixels on a PCB made from PCBWAY.
Have to make some leaves of different sizes and try them before cutting the whole bunch on the CNC.
Unless you're going to run them with a Tiny, why go addressable for just a few RGB leds? 328P/168P have the pins to do 6.
1 meter circumference is just over 12.53" diameter, about right for a lampshade though it'd take a lot of strips to cover one but that one could make a heck of a show, take that Tiffany and your lame colored glass!
GoForSmoke:
We dissected water in chemistry and got fire. Then we learned about air and earth but still can't make gold.
No, that's physics.
Here's an alchemist trick demo: mix gold leaf with sulfur. Heat the mixture until the sulfur partially melts, and cast the mixture into pea sized balls. Present it to the king as sulfur, then boil the beads in sweet vitriol. Ignite the liquid (sweet vitriol contains ether and sulfuric acid) and it completely burns off with an intense blue flame and extremely acrid smoke (sulfur oxides.) Small blobs of gold remain when it cools. Do this when the king talks about beheading his alchemist.