Geeze you'd love this house. heh During our little learning adventure (still ongoing) we created a lot of failures. We became tired of pieces being wrecked, usually by applying paint or a seal though some are from bad paste mixes so stopped making projects. The least few weeks we're only making boards. Card board squares or strips covered in PM. A few twisted and bent ones for testing. We make a few each day, using them to test out techniques, seals, formulas, various brands and types of paints.

Sad thing is there are more failures than successes. Actually, there are no successes so far if you don't count the cornering we've done on earlier box like projects.   

We've used: flour/water, wheatflour/flour/water, pva(elmer's)/water, flour/pva/water. We've tried it thin, thick, and gel like. Even with various sealants, things still warp into total wreckage if we try to paint them.

Haven't touched the wallpaper mix stuff, still trying to avoid that.

Don't be afraid of the methyl cellulose-based kind of wallpaper paste.  It's just made from wood pulp.  Of the three kinds of wallpaper paste, it's the best.  Try Golden Harvest Cellulose Wallpaper Paste, specifically, about $6.

Sue