You can change the colors of the arrows and messages as followings:
a -[#red]> b : <color blue> some message</color>
There is a "collections" participant type:
collections "Things" as things
There is sometimes some weirdness when returning after a self call when there is no explicit return. You can add a hidden return to fix this using:
a -> b++ : do stuff b -> b : do stuff to self b -[hidden]-> a : hidden return to fix weirdness