Chubbu’s
Heritage you can wear.
Founder-led jewelry and gifting brand I built from zero — Nepal’s first 3D-printed jewelry label. I designed the products, identity, sustainable packaging, and physical retail, created and art-directed all of its visual content, and ran the business to break-even in year one.
- Role
- Founder & Creative Director
- Timeline
- June 2023 – June 2024
- Location
- Nepal
- Scope
- Product · Brand · Packaging · Retail · Content
Bringing the tools home.
I’d spent years in New York learning digital design and fabrication, and I wanted to bring those skills home — to make something that was unmistakably Nepali, contemporary, and sustainable. Chubbu’s was the answer: a brand that turns Nepali heritage into wearable design and lightweight decor through 3D printing.
Heritage, in the present tense.
Chubbu’s makes jewelry and objects that carry Nepali cultural identity — earrings alongside pieces modeled on landmarks like the Swayambhunath stupa and the Himalayan range. The premise: heritage you can wear, made with the tools of the present rather than preserved behind glass.
A small word.
A bold statement.
The “Nai” earrings spell “no” (नाइ) in Nepali — a small, playful piece of language design that is also making a statement. People stopped me on the street to compliment them. That unprompted, in-the-wild reaction was the clearest signal that inspired me to start this brand.
The Nai earring, in 3D.
A rotating view of the original design — from a playful word to a wearable object.
A design decision, at every layer.
Sustainability shaped material choices. Packaging was made from Lokta paper, the traditional Nepali handmade paper, tying the unboxing back to the same heritage the products celebrate.
One vision.
Every touchpoint.
Every image of Chubbu’s — from product shots to social — I created myself. I styled, photographed, edited, and art-directed the brand’s entire visual output, giving it one consistent look across the feed, the shop, and every collaboration.
Working as a one-person creative team meant owning the full pipeline: setting up the shot, choosing the light and props, editing for the brand’s palette, and directing how each piece was presented.
Made to meet people.
From a pop-up at Labim Mall every weekend to collaborations and music videos, the brand grew through real-world relationships.
Chubbu’s at Grasslands Festival
A short festival reel bringing the collection into the crowd. Published March 19, 2024.
Performance snapshot from Instagram Insights. Views may include repeat plays; paid versus organic distribution is not specified.
Buddha Air × Chubbu’s
Chubbu’s partnered with Buddha Air, a leading Nepali airline, on a piece marking their 26th year. Blue spiral earrings echo Buddha Air’s brand color and the drift of clouds past a plane window.
Buddha Air — 26th anniversary
A closer look at the collaboration, from the custom packaging to the finished earring.
On screen. Out in the world.
Chubbu’s earrings appear in the music video for Suna Kanchi by Sajjan Raj Vaidya — a video with 47M+ views at the time of this case study.
A brand is a point of view.
Chubbu’s taught me that a brand is more than a logo or a product — it’s a point of view carried consistently across every surface, from a 3D-printed earring to a sheet of Lokta paper to a market stall to the way a single photo is lit.
Building and running it end to end showed me how creative direction meets real-world constraints: the best idea still has to be made, packaged, priced, marketed, and sold.
Securing an airline partnership, seeing the work in a music video, and earning shelf space all came from pitching, collaborating, and knowing how to position Chubbu’s so others wanted to be part of its story. Creative direction and marketing are the same muscle: making people feel something, then giving them a reason to act.