‘I can’t stop my dreams.’ Overland Park inventor renews efforts to share her creations

Vanessa Faller discovers all her inventions in her dreams.

Washable foam mats that kids can color on over and over, odorless kitty litter pads, a glow-in-the-dark kite that flies at night.

Since she was a kid growing up in Brooklyn and Baltimore, all kinds of creations have been coming to Faller when she goes to sleep. She’s kept countless notebooks of ideas since she was little, when her grandma started sending her composition books.

Fill these with your dreams, she’d say.

In 1999, Faller started putting those dreams into reality. She brought one of her patented products, Color-N-Wash, to the Toy Fair at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

The thin foam mats come with cartoon images kids can color on with markers, paint and crayons. A little soap and warm water cleans them completely and they’re ready to be reused.

Her booth at the trade show bustled. Restaurants wanted place mats. Airlines wanted packs to hand out to young passengers. Amusement parks wanted to sell them in their gift shops.

She was awarded as the best new creative idea at the trade show.

“Everyone wanted it. Any kind of business was asking me how they could use Color-N-Wash,” Faller said. “I was severely over my head and I didn’t know what to do, and I was falling apart with all the prospect of sales.”

The next year, Walmart started selling Color-N-Wash in a few stores in Oklahoma, where Faller and her husband, Louis Faller, lived at the time. The company would soon line up orders for more stores across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Schools across the country also placed orders.

Setbacks

Faller soon hit a major roadblock. One of her investors sued her after a local news story mentioned she had other inventions in the works. He wanted a piece of those inventions too.

The lawsuit dragged on for months. Faller was running out of money and the will to fight. Then her 92-year-old grandmother died of a heart attack in Baltimore.

The lawsuit eventually went away, but Faller’s confidence was shaken. When she and her husband moved to Kansas City in 2003, Faller stopped pursuing the production of her inventions and focused on her day job as a nurse.

She has not had a serious investor since.

But inventions never stopped coming to Faller. She continued filling up notebooks. She keeps one in every room of her house.

“I can’t stop my dreams. They do not stop coming until I write them down and work them out,” Faller said.

When her husband became a general manager for the Hendrick Automotive Group, he encouraged her to return to her inventions and to quit her job.

“He supported my dreams. He wanted me to succeed,” Faller said.

So she did. She created a paperweight made out of real preserved cake infused with smells, called Suspended in Time. She also continued perfecting her other inventions, like Color-N-Wash and Litter Box Review, the odorless kitty litter pad.

But when her husband died four years ago, Faller again lost her desire to invent. She started throwing away her inventions, all her materials and research. But her children stopped her and fished everything out of the trash. They knew she’d want to pick it up someday.

Faller, 68, has now returned with gusto. Her garage in Overland Park is filled with prototypes for her current projects for LouVan Products Inc. and future inventions she’s yet to share. She has about 13 in the works, and dozens more in her head.

She’s also on the hunt for a good and reliable investor and a workforce to help her build her business.

Color-N-Wash

A mother of five, Faller came up with Color-N-Wash when her kids were young and wanted to play hopscotch outside. Rather than mark up the driveway, Faller wanted them to be able to draw on something that could be easily washed and also be used inside.

But the idea didn’t fully form until she went to sleep. Like all her inventions, Color-N-Wash came to her in a dream. And she’s spent the years since fine-tuning the product.

She researched the best material to use, one that’s nontoxic, easily washable and built to last. She also made Color-N-Wash for children who have disabilities. The images have raised lines so it’s easy to color inside them, and kids who are blind can feel the shapes.

Color-N-Wash mats come in many sizes and are also made to fit together like puzzle pieces.

She also did her own market research. She has visited zoos, national parks, museums, aquariums, amusement parks, fast food chains and restaurants to gauge their interest in her product.

Some of Faller’s most important customers are schools. Color-N-Wash reduces the amount of paper needed in the classroom, a lifesaver for teachers who only get a finite amount of supplies and often have to spend their own money on additional materials.

Faller says schools across the country still have Color-N-Wash pieces that are over 20 years old and in great condition. The product is not currently available in stores or for purchase.

Litter Box Review

During the 1990s, Faller worked as a nurse in the Los Angeles area and frequently helped AIDS patients.

Many had cats to provide comfort, but they often couldn’t handle the smell of their cat’s urine.

At that time, she was working on another one of her inventions, reusable kitty litter pads. She not only wanted to make something that would last, but she also wanted to achieve the seemingly impossible: an odor-free pad.

Motivated to help her patients, she worked out a formula and created a pad that sits at the bottom of the kitty litter box and can absorb all liquids and odors.

The pad, called Litter Box Review, lasts for six weeks and works so well that visitors can enter the room and not smell a thing.

She still makes the pads by hand in her garage and gives them out to her neighbors.

Today, Faller needs an investor so she can fully realize her visions. She’s also hoping to build up a workforce in Kansas City.

“I hope to get a passionate investor who cares about what I’ve done. And it’s not just about my pocket, I want to give back,” she said.

“I want to go back to all those places that wanted me back then and say, there’s no lawsuit, I have an investor, I have enough material. Please order from us.”

When she was a kid, her mom used to tell her to pull her head out of the clouds, but Faller says she’s can’t help it, this is who she is.

“All of these things come to me in my dreams,” Faller said.

“My head is still up in the clouds, dreaming up my next invention.”