Cut all the branches down to finished height now. That "core" is tiny. It can be trimmed by gripping the sheath of needles with your fingertips and the tip with the other fingertips and pulling straight (off). Or, it can be trimmed with a small scissors as I indicated before.
(The yellow twig is dead. I used it as my example only because it was a clear view of one twig.)
The twig being tip pruned is greatly out of scale. I can't do the artwork at the real level because it would be too small to see.
