What started as a creative outlet for Kim Tranquilli quickly turned into a full-time job — something she describes as a “dream come true.” Tranquilli, Marlin Drive East, is the owner of Sunny Paper Studio, an online store that sells decorative gift card holders. She runs the small business from her colorful home studio, stocked with thousands of pages of designer paper, which she referred to as “my own Joanne-Hobby Lobby.” 

Tranquilli traces her love for crafting back to childhood. As a young girl, she used fabric scraps from her mother’s handmade quilts to create greeting cards. The fabric was hand-ironed and glued onto a thick paper base. Decades later, as Tranquilli worked in IT and project management, she felt pulled back to her first creative outlet: card making. She got her first Cricut machine, a device for precision cutting and design printing, then started the Esty shop to sell her cards in 2013. “I started Etsy to justify my love of buying paper,” Tranquilli joked. She left her corporate job in 2019 to be a stay-at-home mom and quickly found more time to invest in the hobby.

Just as she made cards from repurposed quilt scraps, Tranquilli began making gift card holders from the scraps of greeting cards. It wasn’t long before the coffee cup holders really took off. “The gift card holders just exploded,” she said. Now, her store offers hundreds of varieties of gift card holders, including an apple, pencil, cheerleading pom-pom (which earned a top seller badge on Etsy), video game controller, pizza, hamburger, beer mug and many more. “I’m trying to round out the offerings,” Tranquilli noted. Last Valentine’s Day, she sold 4,500 coffee cup holders alone. It’s the biggest holiday for Sunny Paper Studio, so this year Tranquilli stocked up months in advance to meet the demand.

Her children, Sam and Jack, attend Lincoln Elementary School, making them the third generation of Lincoln students in the family. Now that the boys are in school, Tranquilli has more time to expand her business. Just this year, she hired two part-time employees, Cassi Hall and Kate Sweeney, both moms living in Mt. Lebanon, and launched a new website. “I love running the business side too,” said Tranquilli. She hopes to expand beyond the Etsy store and sell to local businesses, especially coffee shops. Recently, a Louisiana-based coffee shop ordered 100 gift card holders to sell, which inspired the idea. 

The best thing about the gift card holders, Tranquilli said, is they make gift-giving more special. 

“I personally feel like giving a gift card can feel like a cop-out or impersonal — like you gave up on trying to find a gift. But on the other hand, I love just getting gift cards, because then I don’t have to return whatever you just got me that I didn’t want anyway,” she said with a laugh. “These gift card holders can make it feel more personal and make you feel better about giving a gift card. It wasn’t just an afterthought, you thought of the recipient, and it’s what they wanted anyway.”

Check out Sunny Paper Studio’s full collection at sunnypaperstudio.com.