Since the mid-1970s, Queen Margrethe has enjoyed working in the so-called découpage technique, in which clippings from periodicals and books are pasted together for new and often surprising motifs. Queen Margrethe clips in auction catalogues and home magazines and uses her découpage as decorations on trays, photo frames, boxes and especially wastepaper baskets, but also on smaller pieces of furniture and fireplace screens that protect against draft when the fireplace is not in use.

Queen Margrethe’s fine and whimsical découpage works, which are sealed with a protective lacquer, generally have references to literary, mythological or art-historical topics that are reflected in the titles, always written in both Danish and French at the bottom of the objects. The decorative articles for everyday use are presented to family and friends or placed around in the palaces at Fredensborg and Château de Cayx and especially in Christian VII’s Palace at Amalienborg, where all of the guestrooms are furnished with a wastepaper basket decorated with Queen Margrethe’s découpage.

Queen Margrethe’s increasingly refined découpage works have also been used in both books and film. In 2000, Prince Henrik published the poetry collection Cantabile and, in 2010, the poetry collection Frihjul (Free Wheel), both with his wife’s découpage, while the publication in 2003 of Karen Blixen’s Syv fantastiske fortællinger (Seven Gothic Tales) in Danish and English was likewise illustrated with Her Majesty’s clippings. Queen Margrethe has also been extremely active in the creation of a few fantasy films, partly by designing the costumes and partly by creating the scenography’s many decoupage-clipped universes, which live actors in the films move in and out of with the help of special computer techniques. In 2000, Queen Margrethe was involved in a screen version of The Snow Queen based on H.C. Andersen’s fairy tale and, in 2009, a filmed version of The Wild Swans by the same author. A screen version of Karen Blixen’s novel Ehrengard is under production.