After playing around with gloop, I eventually decided that although the effects were interesting the glaze needed so much more work to get it to do what I wanted, and even if I had resolved the issues with it,  I felt it wasn't really the right 'fit' for the work so I chose to focus on using more lichen/crawl looking glazes which I felt would fit bitter with my fungi inspired forms.

I had begun to experiment with magnesium carbonate and silicon carbide in glazes and had had some success with getting sculptural effects. 

Below are pics of tests of lava style glazes using silicon carbide, but the best results were achieved when I used a finer mesh/grade of silicon carbide as this definitely impacted on how puffy and sculptural the glaze became.

Below: Red stoneware with Marilee Lava glaze from Linda Bloomfield's book on Special Effects glazes. This recipe has a 5% addition of copper carbonate.

The biggest reaction and sculptural effect achieved with silicon carbide was a recipe I found on Glazy called  Akiko's crater glaze, described by the contributor Kenneth Ibbett as a a base recipe for Volcanic glaze given to him by his teacher Akiko Hirai. This is the recipe:
Nepheline Syenite, Barium Carbonate, Kaolin, Silica, Rutile & Silicon Carbide. (I used both 200 and 4000 mesh) both puffed up really well as you can see in the test samples and the piece below.

I was pleased with the overall effect of this glaze as I felt it worked really well with the aesthetics of the pieces I was making, and decided it would be one I would use again.

I did a number of experiments on the type of connections that I could make between the clay pieces as I was still experiencing cracks and movement. 

I tried connecting ovoids directly to each other without a joining piece, I used both paper vinegar slip and just water and slipping and scoring. I kept them moist with slow drying and others just air dried, I also connected using small clay pads rather than thrown hollow joining sections like I usually do. 

All the experiments where done with grogged white stoneware and the results where interesting, the piece that was just slipped and scored and then air dried slowly  fell apart before it reached the kiln, see pic above.

The pieces connected with vinegar and paper clay slip stayed together but, despite spraying and slow drying separated at the back seams allowing cracks to develop (see above). 

The pieces joined using clay pads had more success, but I needed to be mindful not to leave any slip behind as this would enable surface cracks to develop between the seams which looked unsightly.

Below is a piece constructed using clay pads. I was really pleased with how this piece had turned out as I managed to get some lift and movement into it which offered potential for a whole range of new pieces. It was a useful experiment to do as it helped me to stop wasting time with joins that just were not going to work.

Unfortunately the piece broke in half at the midpoint after bisque firing so perhaps the join was too weak? Sadly it ended up being used for glaze testing.

See below for the resulting glaze tests, the black crawl glaze (tested) was successful but hard to get it to adhere to the clay surface. The pink was a chrome and tin crawl glaze from Linda Bloomfield’s book on special effects glazes, it goes in the kiln green (see below) and comes out pink! (see below)

Below, after firing with surface cracks at seams and crawl glaze that didn’t work.