it's beginning to look a lot like christmas..

The theme for IllustrationFriday this week is "Excess," which is, of course, all too appropriate for this time of year.
For the holiday season, the average American will spend, on average:
-$607.01 on gifts
-$47.14 on decorations
-$30.77 on Christmas cards (not including postage)
-$19.11 on flowers (83% will be poinsettias)
-$91.83 on food

In addition, 31 million Christmas trees will be bought, and 1.8 billion candy canes will be made.

And then, as par for the course, we'll probably throw away 90% of it.

Skip the stores, support human-level economy and buy handmade. I, of course, am biased toward etsy.

info from Forbes.com

OPEN ____

It's been a while since I've posted any papercut pieces. So, in honor of this week's Illustration Friday topic, "open," I decided to pony up to the x-acto knife once again. While brainstorming for the topic, I was amused that open eyes/mind/heart/ears/hands are somewhat connected to definitions of acceptance. Now, if there are any linguists in the house, I'd be curious to find out how these all came to mean nearly the same thing.