Breitling Bentley Quartz Chronograph BT-208

Lisa, 36, named her line Quench because that's what you do to hot metal, once you're done with it: you quickly submerge it in water to cool and harden it. Her studio is in a room upstairs in the house she shares with her husband and daughter. It is full of well-organized cabinets stuffed with buttons, semiprecious stones, chains and bits of metal crafted into creative shapes.

Lisa began learning the art of jewelry making at the age of 16, while still a student at Waterville High School. She found a job working at Jeffrey's Fine Jewelers in Waterville, now a Day's Jewelers. For the Breitling Bentley Quartz Chronograph BT-207 two years, Lisa learned some of the basics -- not officially an apprentice, but something akin to it.

"I learned how to string pearls with silk thread the old-fashioned way. I learned the real way to repair a necklace," she said. "And eventually, I learned basic metalsmithing and how to do hot work. It was the best job someone like me could have had in high school."

A teacher encouraged her to apply to Rhode Island School of Design, where she was accepted and attended in the late 1990s.

"I knew right off the bat I wanted to study Breitling Bentley Quartz Chronograph BT-208 design and metalsmithing, though I was really into blowing glass, as well," she said.

While there, she studied under renowned German jewelry designer Martina Windels, who operated a high-end gallery in Providence, at which Lisa worked for several years after she graduated. She also worked with acclaimed designer Sam Shaw, who now runs a fine jewelry store in Northeast Harbor. By the time she graduated, she had gone from the most basic of skills to working with nickel silver, a notoriously difficult metal to use.

Lisa returned to Maine in 2005 having burned out trying to make a living making jewelry and looking for a more stable life. She went to the University of Southern Maine and earned a Breitling Bentley Quartz Chronograph BT-209 degree, married her husband, John, and taught art in the Waterville area for three years. Eventually, she stopped teaching and devoted herself to her now 5-year-old daughter, Annabelle. After a year and a half of being a stay at home mom, however, the creative bug just wouldn't stop biting.

"I needed to create again," she said. "It was driving me crazy not to."

That's where Quench Metalworks began. Early on in 2008, Lisa was making felt playthings for Annabelle and wanted some embellishments for them. She found some old buttons Breitling Bentley Quartz Chronograph BT-210 away by older family members, and was struck by how lustrous and beautiful the decades-old mother-of-pearl buttons were.