Paracord People Keychains

If you’ve ever made paracord bracelets, you may have found yourself with a collection of different paracord colors that you don’t know what to do with. That’s what happened to me, anyway. But recently I saw a picture of a little paracord person and thought it was adorable! I didn’t see a tutorial for it, but I figured I could figure out how it was made. As it turns out, it was easy to do, and now I’m going to pass along that info to you!

You really don’t need a lot of paracord to make your own paracord person. In fact, you don’t need many supplies at all. Here’s what I used.

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Supplies:

• Paracord
• Wood bead with large opening (at least 4mm)
• Keychain with ring bigger than the bead opening
• Lighter

Optional:

• Pony beads
• Tape

I almost ordered some wood beads from Amazon, but then I found a multipack at JoAnn and decided to go that route instead. I didn’t know exactly what size I wanted to use, and I wasn’t sure how many of these people I’d be making. It was less expensive to buy the multipack, and I figure I’ll use the other sizes for something else eventually. So far I’ve only used the 18mm size, which has roughly a 5mm opening). I did find these on Amazon, and they have little faces that you might like.

When I was excitedly looking for supplies for this project, I first found some keychains in a resin kit. Those are the ones I used. But I know I also have these somewhere, and they would also work well for this.

Let’s make a paracord person!

First, you want to cut your paracord. I haven’t taken good measurements, but you need one piece that’s roughly 12” long, and another one that’s maybe 18” long. The shorter one will form the legs/pants of your person, and the longer one will be the upper body/shirt.

You’re going to have to fit both ends of the shorter cord through the head bead (and one end through the jump ring), so I like to wrap tape around the ends to make them easier to work with. Alternatively, you could use your lighter to melt down the ends.

Feed one end of the shorter cord through the jump ring, and then take both ends and thread them through the bead. Push the bead up against the jump ring. Then turn the whole thing upside down.

Starting a couple of inches away from the head, start tying knots. If you’re familiar with making paracord bracelets or square knots in general, this should be easy for you. Instead of trying to explain it in words, I’ll post some pictures and a video. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Here’s a video:

Once you have 6 knots or so (whatever you think looks good), slide them up against the bead.

Tie knots to form the arms and legs. You can see what I did, but again, you can do whatever proportions you prefer.

Trim the excess cord to about 1/4” away from the knots.

Using your lighter, carefully melt down the excess cord to the knots so they won’t come undone.

If you’d like to add a face to your people, one easy way to do this—and what I did—is to use a permanent marker. I need to get ahold of a white/silver/gold marker for the darker beads, but my black ultra fine Sharpie works very well on the lighter colored beads. 

You could also make some tiny vinyl decals if you have a cutting machine, but they would be really really tiny! Whatever you do, it will be adorable.

Once you’ve made one, it may be hard to stop. You might have a little family of paracord people before long. 

Happy crafting!