My best friend's birthday and a sad day

Everything seems to conspire at once, doesn't it?  Almost immediately after my last post I found out that a friend from high school had passed away.  It seems so strange - here we're not even 40 yet and already death has visited. :(  I guess we try to prepare ourselves for the deaths of our (older) loved ones, but it rarely crosses our minds to prepare for it to happen to someone our own age (or younger).  Rest in peace, Tricia.
In much happier news, my best friend (born a mere 6 days after me) came over to celebrate our birthdays with me last weekend.  She is a true delight!  Smart, funny, honest - I could go on for hours! :)
Here's the card I made for her:

I got the idea from a card at Archivers that I saw recently.  They used a different Pixie stamp but didn't have it in stock.  This is Paisley Pixie from Stamping Bella - isn't she cute?  My girlfriend has brown curly hair (well, me too just not as dark) which is why I chose to color her with dark hair. :)  I stamped Paisley on a piece of nice white card stock and masked the flowers.  After blending in a little DI in the center I removed the mask and colored the flowers and pixie with a mix of Copics, Smooch, colored pencil, Perfect Pearls mist, Stickles and Spica pen.  Whew!
Once the image was fully colored I used the TJ technique called Out of the Box to cut her out with my Nesties and Cuttlebug.  If you'd like to see a tutorial on this technique you can find it here on SCS.  After it was cut out I edged it with more DI (being very careful not to bend the overhanging pieces).  Paisley was popped up over a piece of Basic Grey paper and a simple white ribbon (which I added some stickles to!).
Here's a close up look at Paisley - you can get a good idea of the shine IRL:

Thanks for dropping by!  Hopefully the card I'm working on now will come together in the next day or so - posting twice in one week, can you imagine?? :D