Tutorial: Chainmaille Jewelry Made From Paper Clips

I love the look of chainmaille jewelry but wasn't sure if I was patient enough to make it -- especially because I didn't want to buy jump rings so I'd be cutting thousands of pieces myself. At the same time, I had LOTS of paper clips in cute colors, and I don't have that much paper to clip together. Well.... paper clips are made of wire.... and so are jump rings.... so I thought I would try out paper clip chainmaille.

I really love how my paper clip chain necklace turned out! I love it so much, I want to share how I made it so you can make your own :)
Difficulty level: 2/5
Time commitment: 3/5
Happiness with result: 5/5

On to the detailed instructions!
Step 1: Gather your materials. You will need lots of paper clips (my 30" necklace was made of jump rings sized such that I got 3 rings per paper clip, and I used ___ paper clips from a 1000-pack from Staples), good wire cutters, and a mandrel (I used a cheap bic ballpoint pen). This size of paper clip and mandrel gave a good jump ring size and inner/outer diameter pairing for the chain I made (full persian, keep reading for more details).

Step 2: Flatten each paper clip into a long, straight wire, then coil it around the non-writing end of your mandrel (pen). Try to get as many full circles around the mandrel as you can with each clip.

Step 3: Using your wire cutters, snip between the loops of the coil to create full circles (i.e. jump rings). I was able to get 3 jump rings per paper clip, with only a little bit of waste wire on both ends. Steps 2 and 3 take the majority of the time in this project.

Step 4: Weave your beautiful, colorful jump rings into something that makes you happy. I'm not an expert on this part, but I used a full persian chain tutorial from The Bead Man, which I found to be very clear and easy to follow. After adding a few rings, you get the pattern pretty quickly and the chain comes together pretty fast. Note: most chainmaillers will advise that you use flat pliers to open and close your jump rings. I used my fingers -- not the best strategy, but when I tried pliers they tore the rubber coating that gives the paper clips their color. Also I found that paper clips are soft enough to coil into rings and open/close by hand, but hard enough to hold their shape while being worn -- perfect!