Wednesday Trends - sponged sky

Hello!
Iwona (Chupa) here, with a little tutorial for this week's Wednesday Trends feature.
I chose to show you, how I sponge a cloudy sky.
There's many ways to do it, some of the common ones include using punched/die cut scalloped shapes, to sponge around. We all know that the clouds in nature show nothing near the regularity of the punched scallops, thus I like to use the template that follows a more random pattern.
I cut my border by hand, from a piece of cardstock. That strip of card has been my trusty companion forever, and after countless times that I used it, it's still in good shape :)

As you can see, I've got one end cut for my clouds, while the other one is a torn paper. I use the other side for grass - it gives a soft, slightly irregular finish.

I normally sponge with the same brand of ink - Versa Color cubes. Most of the time, I'd use the beautiful teal shade of Celadon to 'paint' the sky with... mmmm LOVE that colour!
I find the inks with soft spongy surface (like Versa Color & Versa Magic), the best to work with (I even use an old cube of PTI's Tea Dye ink to saturate it with Distress Ink, and sponge the edges of the paper with the cube). The ink is my personal choice though, and I know that everyone has their own preferences.

(you can see how the cube has some 'fluff' from the sponge on it... I use it only for this purpose, so I don't bother too much if it gets a little messy)
Let's get to our project. I started with the image - I chose the adorable girl from Blossom By Blossom, and coloured it with Copics - of course ;)

I start with the top layer, holding the template firmly against the paper, and working the sponge in circular moves above it. I like to slide the template sideways a bit as I go, so that I don't get the straight line.

As I'm building up the layers, I keep skewing the template, and often let the clouds from different levels meet. The more irregular the pattern, the better!

After I'm finished, I often go over the whole sky with the sponge, pressing very lightly. This evens out the colours, tones down the brightness of white clouds.

Here's the finished card!

Thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoyed :)