Hi Friends,
This is another seemingly simple process that I just can't figure out.
Ok, I started with this image

Then I manipulated it so that I got this starburst-like shape from the center of the above.

Now I want to put a flat fill inside. But when I apply the color, you can see that it's filling what would have been the inside of the original image, rather than the inside of the star shape. So I'm thinking I must need to invert the selection, in order to get the color inside. But when I click Invert Selection, the star shape is deselected, and everything else on the page I'm working on gets selected. So it's sort of like inverting the entire image as a whole, even though I have this star shape selected alone, on a layer of its own, and not cloned or grouped or combined.....to my knowledge, with anything else.

What do I need to do to select the star as an object with the fill area inside, or otherwise get the inside of the star colored?

THANKS, as always, for your kind help and support

First, a clarification on "inverting the selection". That function only changes which objects are currently selected. It doesn't modify the objects themselves at all. You can think of the selection as a list of objects that are "chosen". If you click one object, it gets put on the list. When you then do Invert Selection, Inkscape takes any objects on the list off of it, and puts any objects that weren't on the list onto it. But again, it doesn't modify any properties of the objects.

Now for your question. I'm guessing that the way you got from the first image to the second was by slicing the "leaves" up, maybe with Cut Path. The problem you're having is that the individual leaf slices are all still separate subpaths. They look like they're joined because they overlap a bit, but they're separate. Here's how you can fix it.

1. Select the object, by clicking it.
2. Go to the Node tool (keyboard shortcut F2).
3. Now look at one of the "points" of the star shape. It may look like there is only one node there. But if you drag a selection box around the node, you'll see in the status bar that two nodes are selected. ("2 of N nodes selected.")
4. On the toolbar are various node operation buttons. One of the buttons has two nodes above, an arrow pointing downward, and a one node below. When you hover over it with the mouse, the tooltip is "Join selected endnodes." Press that button while the two nodes are selected. (Or use the keyboard shortcut Shift-J.)
5. You should see the fill change slightly so that it kind of spans the two leaf slices on either side of the point you just modified.
6. Now go around to each point, selecting the two nodes of the point and joining them. As you go, the overall fill should change, until at the end, the inside will be filled instead of the "outside" as it is now.

Thank you very much, kelan.
In all honesty, I don't remember exactly how I got the star separated from the rest. I think I put a circle around the star shape, so that it was centered as well as I could make it. Then I think I did Path Intersection, although I really don't remember.

I DO remember being surprised to end up with a star inside a circle, instead of just the star. I might mention here that I have no background in art or graphics, so I'm learning as I go. Often I can't get the program to do what I want, even though I know it's capable of doing what I want. But despite reading the tutorials and/or user guide, I can't seem to get it how I want. At this point, I usually use whatever result I've gotten (that's not quite what I want) and try to modify it to be what I want. I don't know if maybe it would be better to ask for help right up front. But I like to think of modifying whatever I ended up with, as another opportunity for a learning experience.

Anyway, what I did next was remove the arcs between the points of the star (which combined, form a circle). So now when I have the resulting star selected with the Node tool ( ) it's telling me I have 31 nodes. 3 of the points DO consist of 2 endpoint nodes, and those I have successfully joined, following your instructions.

A couple of the others have 2 nodes, but apparently they're not endpoint nodes. In my way of bumbling about, I would probably try selecting them and breaking the path, or maybe "split path between 2 non-endpoint nodes", to turn them into endpoints. Then join them. But maybe you know of a better way?

The rest of the points have between 3 and 6 nodes each. And I have no idea how to handle them. Do you think I should just start all over making the star? I'm sure there's a better way to do it, than how I did it. Or is there a way to get rid the extra nodes? Well, I do know how to delete nodes But not how to choose which of the overlapping 3 to 6 nodes to delete....besides trial and error, and undo.

Thanks for your help and patience

Update -- while waiting for a reply, I went ahead an did the trial and error thing. And I'm happy to report it was ultimately successful. So I now have the star shape with a solid fill, like I wanted.

So thanks for your help kelan, and everyone else who followed the topic. Now I'm off to my next challenge....which surely won't be far away, lol!

For your edification, in this case the easier way would have been to use Path -> Difference. Looking at the first image, you know that the fill is inside the leaves, but you want the star-shape that is formed outside of them. So you can use the original object to "punch" the correct shape out of a new object.

Create a circle in the middle of the star-shape, like you said you did. Lower the circle under the leaf object (because Difference is "bottom object minus top object"). Now do Path -> Difference.

The parts cut from the circle are where ever the original object had fill, which is exactly what you want. Much easier than mucking around with nodes and joins.

Ok, thanks for that kelan. Of course I had to try it....and wow! That did exactly what I wanted. Amazing how easy things go when you know the right way to do something, lol Those path/math operations look so simple -- reading about them in the tutorial, they sound so logical. But they can be so confusing in real practice...

But anyway, THANKS again kelan. A few lessons learned in this topic

[EDIT -- Since this problem turned out to be NOT about Invert Selection, I'm editing the topic title to more accurately reflect its subject, ie - fill.]