A bid to create the world's largest chain made out of paperclips has fallen short of its target.

Sixty volunteers at a north Wales school wanted to build the chain which has to be 20 miles long to see them in to the record books.

It's been tiring but I thing we're the better for doing it Co-organiser David Green

But after staying up all night and using almost a million pieces of the office ware, the team fear they have achieved only three-quarters of their aim.

Yet it may still be enough for them to smash the British record for a paperclip chain.

The team gathered at St Richard Gwyn Roman Catholic High School in Flint were furiously snapping together hundreds of thousands of paperclips from 1800 GMT on Friday.

They had hoped to smash the previous record of 32.184 kilometres (20 miles) by the time they finished on Saturday evening.

Officials from the Guinness Book of Records have agreed to judge deliver a final verdict on the length of the chain, whose construction was videoed by the volunteers.

Guinness World Records are judging the event

Due to the limit on the number of people who can take part, each volunteer needed to snap together an average of 15 paperclips each minute of the challenge.

But just a few hours short of the deadline, event co-organiser David Green, a sixth-form student at the campus, said: "Some of us have been doing it, but not all of us.

"We're about a quarter behind where we should be."

The volunteer groups was comprised of teachers, sixth formers and Year 11 pupils.

David said: "It's been tiring but I thing we're the better for doing it.

"Of course its frustrating not beating the world record when very often it seemed that we would break it."

He said the event was on course to raise around �3,000 for charity.

Organisations set to benefit from the event are the Handicapped Children's Pilgrimage Trust, Samaritan's Purse (operators of Operation Christmas Child) and the RNLI.

The school's head teacher, Thomas Quinn, said: "It is great that we have students who are so concerned about helping others in society that they go to such lengths to get their message across.

The paperclip event challenge ended at 1800 GMT on Saturday.