Paracord Christmas Trees

We've been making our own woggles for a while using a cobra knot.

We decided to put this skill to the test for our Christmas Tree festival entry

Each tree needs:
10 pony beads (7mm)
80cm of brown paracord
130cm of green paracord


I got a pack of 1000 metallic beads from Amazon for about £4.50.  I like to use 550 paracord from the bushcraft store  but I was struggling to get the colours from them so ended up buying cheaper stuff.  It's not as nice to work with but was ok.

I found a very clear video on youtube (skip to end of post to see it) to follow.

Different colour paracords make different trees and you can even splice the branch cord and make them different colours on the same tree if you like.  I tried one with a spliced trunk and spliced branch colours but in the end thought they looked too 'messy' and sometimes sticking to classic is the best thing.








The trunk colour needs about 80cm of paracord to be generous.  I got it down to about 60cm once I got confident and had much less wastage.

The branches, depending on their size, need about 130cm. 












The start of anything is always the hardest but it's simply a cobra knot start.   The video shows it well.

I found mine worked best if I made the start to the loop about 17cm.

 I just use a tealight to burn off ends.




















Sewing scissors and tealights are my paracord tools (*every scouter rolls their eyes*)

Getting the branches going is much easier as you have something to tie to.

 But how you burn and point your ends really matters or you won't be able to thread the pony beads.

 You have to gradually reduce the size of the loops to graduate your branches.

Our unit necker colours are grey and purple, I thought they looked quite nice.

Some of the Rangers prefered not to tight tie them.

They also found the added benefit of having tealights burning all night!

So the pile of trees for the festival is growing.

I'll show you after the event how they looked.


You can make trees from one piece of paracord but I really prefer the ones that have a different coloured trunk to the branches.













Here is the video I found easiest to follow.