Creating collage papers and more stamps

Recently, I was looking at some printed rice papers for collage and was tempted to make a purchase, when I had a revelation. I had tissue paper, acrylic paint, stamps and ink, so why on earth didn't I create my own papers?  I had a happy hour or so creating these, using just black and white acrylic paint, which I dry brushed onto the tissue paper.  I found I had a lot of stamps (no surprise there!) which would work really well to give that grungy look I liked.  These included circle shapes, patterns, text, splodges and splats. 

So, I now have four papers to rip up and use in collage projects and they didn't cost me anything (except for the original supplies, which I already had).  I foresee more variations on a theme to come...

I have also been carving my own stamps again, from pencil erasers.  The black images are the most recent ones I have made and I used this 'mop up' sheet to practise applying different watercolour pens and pencils to the stamp to get a multicoloured image too.  I found that the distress inks or Zig watercolour pens gave me the best results.  I think I may well be making more stamps like this over this year.

Experimenting again

I have been making some tentative experiments using distress inks (watercolour ink pads) and some pre-printed designs which resist the colour.  I used some blending sponges to apply the colour and I am pleased with my first attempts.  

I think this was my favourite one, which was the last one I did and I was a bit more confident with the technique.  I like the way the colours blend so easily with each other to create other colours.  I have also bought some watercolour brush pens so am looking forward to highlighting patterns and seeing what that looks like.
I have also bought some water based lino printing inks and am hoping to start printing again (I have done a bit of lino printing over the years, for A level Art and Craft and for my Foundation course in Art and Design and I really enjoyed it).  I was inspired by a book, 'Block Print' by Andrea Lauren, which Chris bought and which shows many different printing ideas, including lino and using wooden stamps. I am going to start with making backgrounds for my wooden blocks (I have a Blockwallah birch tree block I am going to use) and see how I get on, then move on to more complex designs...well, that's the plan, anyway.
I just need to get rid of a cold which Chris has given me (thanks for sharing), and then it will be all systems go.