designer / illustrator / berkeley, ca

Hello! My name is Alina Buevich and I’m a designer & illustrator—you can spot a lot of my work online but sometimes it also shows up at eventS, in print, or on some merch. Outside of that, I also spend a lot of time drawing, taking on freelance projects, and collaborating on lump shop. In a lot of these projects you’ll see examples of work from my time as an in-house designer at Discord and Chronicle Books.

Any questions . ?

Lump Shop Overview 

/ 2018—2020
 Lump Shop was a small artisan candle sculpting operation that I co-founded with my friend, Lauren Lubell. Working as designers by day and chandlers (candle-makers) by night, Lump Shop was both a small business and a small world. Driven by our mutual interest in learning new crafts and processes, we sculpted, molded, and poured each candle by hand.


Photography by Naomi McColloch

The Original Lump Family


Branding


Although the actual candlemaking process itself was more collaborative, I handled most of the design and branding visuals, including but not limited to the logo, web design, and printed marketing materials. 

logo sketches


business cards and wholesale order sheets


Research & Development

 As an industrial designer, Lauren had an established skillset with ceramic mold making and casting, which proved invaluable to the art of candle making. After extensive experimentation, we developed our own custom wax mixture of paraffin, soy, additives, and colorant—this formula ensured each candle looked vibrant and remained resistant to environmental changes.
After finalizing the composition of the wax mixture, we did more tests to finalize our pouring procedures and optimal temperatures. After a few months, the basic structure of our process could be broken down into four basic steps: sculpt, mold, pour wax, remove finished candle.

The candles were sculpted out of plasticine clay before being molded
We used ice cube trays to do quick color dye tests for the wax
A 2 part rubber mold for the worm candle, held together with rubberbands
Removing the worm from its mold
The twins candle burning just as intended...
A secret ritual 🤫





Lump Shop @ Events 

/ 2018—2020
As a small business we participated in many events, fairs, markets, and other pop ups. Here’s a selection of some memorable times:


West Coast Craft


West Coast Craft is a bi-annual juried exhibition of artist and designer craftspeople that takes place at Fort Mason in San Francisco. In the winter of 2017, we were accepted into the WCC Intro Scholarship program and given a free booth to exhibit our first collection of candles.
Although restricted by a tight budget and strict trade show fire code, we stood out from the crowd with a unique hand-painted table design and by playing up bright colors and textures. The different candle designs were displayed on islands while the majority of the actual inventory was prepackaged, ready for easy purchasing (important when dealing with 25,000+ attendees).


SF Art Book Fair


 Eggy Press asked us to create a product for the 2019 SF Art Book Fair. We decided to use this opportunity to design a new candle that built upon everything we learned with the original line. The sausage link candle was ultra functional:
  • made from beeswax for a long, clean burn
  • packaged as one link but technically 8 candles (what a deal!)
  • comes with metal condiment candle holder with custom 3d printed pronged bottom
  • packaged in thermal hotdog sleeve
  • informational brochure with instructions on How to Burn Your Wiener also included