Painted boxes and frame

I love to paint and decorate paper mache pieces...I found these little shaped boxes in my stash of stuff from years ago...I based coated each one with white acrylic paint, then added the decorative painting, I painted each box bottom to coordinate with the painting on top and then sealed everything with waterbased varnish...

The sides and bottoms of each box shown above...

Small square paper mache box...I decided to do little bird houses, instead of a barn type house for this scene...

This is a chipboard frame cut from my custom die I had made...I wanted a 4 inch frame with a 2 inch opening...I like having the 1 inch wide frame for decorating...I will definately be doing more of these frames...i enjoyed painting this one...i basecoated the chipboard with off white acrylic paint, two coats, then I added a wash of blue color for the sky and green for the grass area...then painted in the details of the scene...

when I base coat my chipboard and paper mache pieces, I generally use two to three coats of white or off white acrylic paint...I paint each basecoat on, going the opposite direction with each coat...first coat side to side, second coat, top to bottom, then i kinda sand the piece using either very fine sanding disc or a piece of brown paper bag, then add a final coat if needed going the side to side direction again...this seems to give a smoother surface for working on...