Mini Mystery Monday #6

Recently, I was printing a batch of my STARRY NIGHTS pattern and my eye was taken by a section of the piece that I thought would make a good little ornament.  Here's the section that caught my eye - it's outlined in lime green:

And because I was in a pink & green mode, I pulled these threads:

    Watercolours 058 - "mocha rose" for my variegated thread
    DMC #5 pearl cotton, 936 - dark avocado green (for the borders)
    DMC #5 pearl cotton, 3350 - dark pink (for the brightest accent color)
    DMC #5 pearl cotton, 962 - medium pink (for the medium accent color)
    DMC #5 pearl cotton, 963 (or 818) - light pink (for the lightest accent color)
    Fyre Werks Soft Sheen FT38 - dark pink (for the ribbon metallic accent)

I started doodling around with some stitches and came up with a really sweet little design.
It's only 3.75" x 3.75" in its finished size on 18 ct canvas.  I used a 8" x 8" piece of "rose blush" pink canvas, but really any color will be fine, since you stitch over all the exposed canvas in this piece. Or if you want to pull your own thread colors, just use a canvas color that works with your threads.

And here's the first graph of this design for you to follow:

Start in the center of your canvas and create this off-set star design first:

Please note that this star is created with an ODD number of 9 stitches in each arm, thus the center empty square is a 9 x 9 box.  (Having a 9 x 9 base to work with lets us easily create a checkered border that has 3 x 3 mosaic squares.)  And you can see that I've poked holes in the center area to denote a 5 x 5 square center that we will fill later with something fun and easy and cute.....

But for this first installment of Mini Mystery #6, just complete your checkers with your DARK border color, so you have something that looks like this (but go ahead and add the variegated stitches that give you the second set of arms on your star):

That's all for now.... I'll see you next Monday with the next fun part!!