Hapeville, Georgia (Atlanta area) · Est. 2023 · Founded by Dasha Lebedev
Dasha Lebedev was born in Belarus, raised in the Atlanta suburbs, and grew up eating tinned seafood with her parents. She always liked drawing fish. The idea for a sardine-tin candle seemed to come out of nowhere -- and then it went everywhere. She posted her quirky, sculptural fish candles on Instagram, quit her tech job, and moved into a studio in Hapeville, Georgia. Every candle opens like a real sardine tin, revealing hand-placed wax fish swimming in scented wax. Hand-wrapped with whimsical paper, one by one, by Dasha and a small team of friends.
Dasha Lebedev didn't plan any of this. She was working a full-time job in tech, living in Atlanta, drawing fish the way she always had -- a lifelong love she brought with her from her childhood in Belarus and the North Atlanta suburbs, where tinned seafood was a staple at her family's table. Then, somehow, the idea arrived: a candle that came in a tin like a sardine tin, with wax fish hand-placed inside, scented and sculptural and completely unlike anything else in the candle world.
She built the first ones in her studio in Hapeville, Georgia, designed every mold herself, illustrated every label, and started posting on Instagram. She didn't expect the response. By the end of 2023 she had quit her tech job and recruited a handful of friends to help her keep up. Today every Tinned Candle is still made entirely by hand -- wax melted with all-natural fragrance, fish hand-placed one by one to look like they're swimming, the tin hand-wrapped in whimsical illustrated paper that Dasha designs herself. She tried boxes once. Her customers voted for the hand-wrapping. So the hand-wrapping stayed.
Carried at Anthropologie. On a registry, Tinned Candle is the gift that gets unwrapped, examined, laughed over, and immediately displayed -- and that smells like sea salt and rose and the very specific joy of something made by someone who genuinely loves what they do.
