How do I seal watercolored papier-mâché orange peel boxes?

I haven't been on permies much the last few months because it's been pure insanity in my life. My husband was disabled for three months due to a Crohn's flare up, and I'm teaching more classes at my kids' school. Just before Christmas, though, some of my friends worked together to make a big gift basket for my family, full of goodies my husband (who can't eat much due to his crohn's) could eat...including some big tasty oranges. It was such an amazing, kind gesture.

I needed some way to thank them, and I had recently seen Sally Pointer's videos on making orange boxes:





I didn't have any wheat flour to make the traditional gluten-based papier-mâché paste. So, I decided to try using gum arabic (because I didn't want to use Elmer's PVA glue. Why make a container out of all natural materials and then coat it with a type of plastic?). I'm pretty sure gum arabic wasn't the best choice, though, because it reanimates really easily!  It was also finicky to work with, because it was such a thin liquid.

I then painted the boxes with my homemade watercolors. Usually my watercolors are pretty water resistant...but maybe because they're on a surface already coated in gum arabic made them reanimate too easily?

I went outside to get a pictures of the orange boxes, and the tiniest amount of moisture from the frozen snow caused my paint (which had been dry for days) to smear!

I guess that means I need to seal these somehow...but with what? I don't want to seal the inside, because then it wouldn't have it's lovely orange scent. But, the outside obviously needs to be sealed in some manner so the paint doesn't smear when touched with wet hands or a tiny amount of water!

What is a natural sealing method that won't reactivate the water color?

I want to say "cold wax", but I don't know what that's made from.  It's a common way to protect watercolour painting.  I suspect the traditional recipes are different than the modern ones.

Also, they look fantastic!

I was going to say carnauba or beeswax ought to do it. What a fun project, Nicole! Thank you for sharing it!

Thanks for sharing with us this lovely project - your orange peel boxes look amazing!
I'm seconding the beeswax as a sealant; it's natural as a wax it doesn't contain water.
But how to apply it without damaging the painting? The most usual method is to rub it on, but I'm afraid it might smear the painting again.

You could try grating (or chopping) beeswax into the tiniest flakes you can make, then sprinkle a thin layer on a box, and try to melt it with a hairdryer?
This is all theory, and I'm afraid the practice might become just too much with all the surfaces to cover (especially the sides).

Edit: beeswax needs heat. Orange peel doesn't like heat. Perhaps beeswax is not the way to go. What a tricky combination of materials! Something sprayable would probably be the best solution, even if not natural.

I hope you find a solution that works for you, good luck!

It looks like cold wax is also called "encaustic wax" (the same stuff that Roman Egyptians used to make their mummy portraits by adding pigment to the wax and "painting" with the pigmented wax). The encaustic wax can be made of dammar resin and beeswax. I found a recipe at Earth Pigments:

Ingredients

10 parts Beeswax

1 part Dammar Resin lumps

Dammar Resin has a higher melting point than beeswax, so it should be melted first, then the beeswax added. Neither should be heated over an open flame, or to temperatures above 250 F. Stir to blend while melting, then pour the mixture into aluminum foil muffin pans for cooling. Although the dammar resin will contain some impurities, these will fall to the bottom of the mixture as it hardens. Each contained portion can now be mixed with pigments or stored to be melted again with pigments.

They also note that many people use very different ratios of beeswax to resin:

A leading encaustic paint manufacturer consistently uses a ratio of 4.5 parts beeswax to 1 part dammar. This would be considered at the top end of the range by most artists, producing a hard paint.

An average among many working artists is a standard ratio of 6 parts beeswax to 1 part dammar.

AMIEN (Art Materials Information & Education Network) hosted by the Intermuseum Conservation Association, recommend a ratio of no higher than 1 part dammar to 10 parts beeswax, citing evidence that dammar is brittle and can yellow over time.

I thought about trying my hand at making cold/encaustic wax....but I really don't want to mess it up.  Learning new skills is awesome and fun....but I've already made a lot of mistakes on these little orange peal containers, and don't want to risk making even more.  Soooooo, I ended up ordering JJacquard Dorlands Wax. It says that it's a mixture of beeswax and dammar resin, though I'm not positive that they didn't mix in other stuff. Fingers-crossed that they didn't!