Soldering these LEDs is quite a commitment. I'm up to 12 now and started looking around to see if there's anything similar that I could've just bought instead and found very many trees like this one. I'm far enough into this project that I want to see it through, but I might recommend to anyone wanting an LED tree to just buy it and hack it instead of building one from scratch.

That being said I thought the little silicone flowers on some of the trees on the market were cool and was able to find them for sale on aliexpress. The tree is looking really good now even just at 12 LEDs running one of the demo neopixel scripts, I'm really digging the look/feel of the enamel wire as the trunk and roots and the flowers hide much of the heatshrink and LED leads. I'm working on a laser-cut wooden box enclosure as well which I'll upload CAD files and images of once it's put together. Pictures below: