Loop in Loop Chain Process

Here's a quick little photo tutorial on forming the links for loop in loop chain. There are several good YouTube sources for this, but these are my own photos, and thoughts on the process. 

Step one is to solder or fuse your links. I made mine on a half inch diameter mandrel. This was slightly larger for my project, but it took getting the chain together to figure that out. I'll probably make another one of these with slightly smaller links. Like on a 3/8" mandrel.

I used round nose pliers to stretch each link into a rough oval. I tried to keep the solder joint to one side, not in the middle of anything.

I used stepped bail making pliers to round out the ends of the oval. 

Back to the round nose pliers, I pinched the center of the oval to make a figure 8.

Last step, I used the bail forming pliers to fold the figure 8 in half, curving it over the pliers. 

Linking the things together is a tiny bit fiddly, on occasion. But you slip the open spot where your two loops are almost touching through the two loops of the previous link, and then sort of twist. Rinse and repeat. 

This is 6" of chain. I started with 32 links. I had to re-solder three, which was pretty good, and I didn't lose any to the soldering process. However, I popped 5 of them while forming. So this is 27 rings. Interestingly, almost all of the failures happened in the final stage of forming.

January earrings

I decided, like, yesterday that I wanted to recreate a necklace from the British Museum. It's a loop in loop chain with a central agate pendant. The connection to the pendant is really interesting, and I've never done loop in loop chain before. But I didn't have nearly enough wire on hand to do the entire chain. So while I started working on that, knowing that I won't finish it until next month, I still wanted to get a project done this month. So I decided to make a second pair of those Roman earrings that are so ubiquitous. I will branch out in earrings eventually, but I was only so-so about my first pair of these, so I wanted to give it another shot. 

I don't have progress pictures, and they're not completed, because I haven't decided what beads to use yet. But the findings are complete. I'll update with another photo once I decide on the beads. 

Edited with photo of finished earrings. The beads are agate and an unknown green semi precious stone.