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!
