Happy Thangsgiving and How MISTI was Created

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone is having a great day.  As for me, I am spending it with my wonderful in laws.  I will be back home tomorrow.  So for all of you that have just ordered grid pads, cleaner, and magnets, I will start mailing those out as soon as I get home.

I have Thanksgiving day everyday by making it a point to give thanks and praise to God everyday for all the blessings He has given me.  I am so grateful for the seed God planted in my thoughts to come up with MISTI.  Last year when it came time to do the church Christmas cards for the pastor, I was dreading the whole process.  I was trying to come up with a good excuse and ask the pastor if this year we could purchase them.  My thoughts were that my hard work would just be thrown away.  I prayed asking to find  a card design that would be easy to replicate.  I found one and ordered my supplies.

Sitting down to start making 100 cards, I cringed and wondered why I committed to this.  I thought to myself that this was a way to serve God doing something I love.  I said a prayer, thanking God for blessing me with an awesome craft room and making it a point to check my attitude so that I would serve with a joyful heart.  The process of making cards began and my joyful heart soon started to lose the joy.  Mis-stamping was happening too often and my neck was starting to hurt from craning over.  Frustration set in and I took a break and prayed.  I prayed for an easier way to get this task done.

I looked at my desk and the stack of wasted cardstock.  My first thought was, “How  can I solve this problem?”  Then God stepped in.  My thought was to create a fixed point to be able to re-stamp.  What did I do?  I used washi to tape my Fiskar’s stamp press to a mouse pad.   The next day, I went to the hardware store and started to build my prototype.  It took three trips to the store.  When I finally got it to work, I actually cried.  I completed my cards error free and in record time.

I went to an attorney and had a patent search done.  He recommended that I not seek a patent.  Needless to say,  I was disappointed.  Feeling that some big company would steal my idea, I researched about supplies and manufacturers as discreetly as I could.  That is how this journey started.

Recently, several readers kept telling me to get a patent.  I prayed once again for wisdom and discernment.   I kept getting this nagging feeling that I should seek a second opinion on a patent.  The first attorney that did the patent search did not specialize in patents.  I sought one out and found a patent attorney in Chicago.  My new attorney studied the patent search results and advised me that my invention was novel enough to seek a patent.  So last week, I started the patent process.  In about four weeks, I can label my product patent pending.

Thank you so much for all of your encouragement and support.  Your kind words are precious to me.  I would like to also thank those of you that have spread the word about my product.  Thank you Linda C. for being my advocate on the forums.  Thank you Karen B. for your encouraging words.  Thank you Jennifer McGuire  and Kristina Werner for your willingness to promote my product.  Word cannot express the joy that is overflowing from my heart.  THANK YOU!