The LightenUp story set seed one day on the drive home from visiting children at boarding school. Farm life in rural Australia can be challenging, so in a bid to find something else to focus on, I decided to channel my creativity into crafting lampshades.

I asked my middle sister Jenny to come on board as a partner. At that stage, we had no idea how to make lampshades. We just knew that was what we wanted to do. So we went to a course in Sydney, and in August 2017, LightenUp Handmade was born!

I (Vanessa) am the creative one. I hand-craft our lampshades from our little LightenUp HQ on a broad-acre farming property west of Rowena on the North West Plains, NSW. Jenny lives in Canberra and is the calming force behind the scenes.

Together we share a passion for interior design and beautiful textiles. We love that there are so many talented people in our great country, and we endeavour to source fabrics designed and/or made in Australia wherever possible.

It has been wonderful to see our little business grow. We’ve added some new products, including gorgeous hand-turned timber lamp bases (designed by us and hand-turned in Melbourne), and we have also expanded the LU team (meet them here).

Mostly though, we are forever grateful for the support of all our customers who happily seem to love lampshades as much as we do.