She had been "fiddling around with it for years" and finally got a source of materials for lampshades and developed them into kit form.
She now runs classes at her Interior Design Studio in Stafford St several times a month, on Saturdays, and they are proving popular.
People travelled from as far afield as Wellington to attend and they were "guaranteed to walk away with something that looks professional".
Mrs Buis was not aware of anyone else offering similar classes, yet there was a demand for them. People wanting to make a lampshade struggled to find the parts, she said.
Proving particularly popular at the business have been lampshades featuring photographs of birds taken by Dunedin photographer and landscape architect Stefan Mutch.
Mr Mutch brought in a photograph one day of fantails and Mrs Buis thought it would look good on a lampshade. Within a week, it was done.
Mrs Buis completed an interior design diploma in Christchurch in the mid-1980s, encouraged by a friend who was an architect and interior designer.
While studying, she worked for some design studios and when she returned to Dunedin she worked for Kitchen Studio, designing kitchens.
While bringing up four sons, Mrs Buis did some freelance work with Resene on a casual basis and was then a designer at McKenzie and Willis.
She later worked with fellow interior designer Kirsten Baldwin, before branching out on her own 18 months ago.
Interior Design Studio is undergoing expansion as Mrs Buis was "running out of space". She enjoyed working in the area of the city that was the "rag-trade district".
The business was thriving and she was kept busy with commercial work, work on motels, apartments and many new houses and also renovations. She employed a design graduate and also lectured at Otago Polytechnic.
At present, she was enjoying embellishing "the French connection", the softness of a more vintage approach and furniture from the 1950s.
