NBUS Flowers IV and Commenting Woes

Hello Stamplings!

I hope you had a lovely weekend and made a lot of memories however you spent it! We had to postpone our plans, but all is well and I made use of the creative time to keep going with my basket of flowery NBUS. I'm going to get right to it because I have lots to say about commenting further down.

Seven

The NBUS stamp I used for this design is "Luminous Poppies" from Memory Box. The square frames are from MFT, the NBUS fabulous die is from "Fabulous Phrases" by Concord & 9th, and the "you" die is from Winnie & Walter. I'm not sure if you can see it, but Hammy glossified the poppies.

This design is a CASE (copy and share everything) of a beautiful card I received from my dear friend Mac Mable whose blog is The Sweetest of Peas. Here is the card she sent me:  

Isn't it stunning? I was so intent on CASEing this beauty and have kept it at the ready since my birthday in 2019! I got there in the end! 😲

Challenges: Memory Box (flowers), Just Us Girls (Word Week: flowers), Snippets Playground (Must use snippets. I used snippets for frames and die-cut sediments).

Eight

The NBUS artsy tulip stamp featured in this design is "Creative Chaos" from Visible Image. It was all the rage when it first came out and, as so often happens, I dropped what I was doing and sent my fingers off shopping for it. Then it sat. And waited. And waited. (You see now why I had to make using these beautiful stamps a single-minded focus. They have been more than patient!)

The background is a piece of pp and the card frame and "enjoy" sediment (from Penny Black) are cut from copper paper. The stamps from the set have been heat-embossed in copper. Hammy added the extra little dots of bling with a peg stamp.

I had so much fun using the copper e/p that I found other suitable pieces of pp and went on a batch run, making six cards in total.  

Commenting Woes

Blogger has done another "enhancement" when it comes to commenting on our blogs. This is what I've experienced:

• Some readers were unable to leave comments on the NBUS challenge. I discovered it was because I had chosen the "embedded" comment format for that blog. I changed it to the "pop up" format and those readers could again leave comments. [If you have embedded commenting on your blog and you need to change it, go to Settings, Comments, Comment Location.]

• Some readers have left comments on this blog, but they didn't appear on the comment section at the end of the blog post. This problem seems to be more complicated. (Thank you, Blogger, she says sarcastically.) A couple of possible reasons:
• If you are a no-reply blogger and you leave a comment on a moderated blog, Blogger intercepts the comment, puts it in the spam folder, and the blog's owner may never see it. If you'd like more information, this website explains a no-reply blogger and provides a solution: Let's Add Sprinkles. 
• As a blog owner, if you see comments in your spam folder, you move them to your inbox, and click on the link to "publish." You then get a pop-up response from Blogger letting you know that the comment has published. 
  
  In the past, that was sufficient. As of two or three weeks ago, that changed and I discovered that many of these comments were NOT being published, in spite of the message that they were!
  
  It's ridiculous, but blog owners are now required to do an additional step in order to actually publish the comments of their readers who are either no-reply bloggers, or who are not Gmail users, who are using non-Google web browsers, or who knows why? Normally these comments would be in the "Awaiting Moderation" section, but now they are mixed in with those not awaiting moderation. 
  
  To check and see if you have any of these non-published comments lurking in your reader's comments on your dashboard, the solution is a bit of a pain, but your readers will appreciate it. After all, they took the time to leave you a comment!
• From your dashboard, click "Comments" and scroll down the right-hand side of each comment. As you scroll, pictures will appear with options to 'remove content,' 'mark as spam,' or 'delete.' However, if you have unpublished comments (in spite of the steps above) you will see a checkmark as the far right picture. If there is a checkmark, you must click it and a popup box will ask if you want the comment published. Affirming that will finally ensure that your reader's comments are published to your post. Phew!
  

These are just my observations and opinions. If you know of a different or simpler solution, or I have given incorrect information, please let me know. To me it seems like another blatant attempt to convert everyone to Google products, but in doing so, Blogger is causing aggravation to both the readers AND the blog owners who eventually are going to get fed up and stop commenting and/or blogging! That seems a stupid shoot-yourself-in-the-foot plan when you've got stiff competition from Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest!

Or I could be wrong and someone just made a software error! Make sure you report any problems to Blogger help ... squeaky wheel and all that. By the way, as a blog owner, you might want to let your readers know if you are moderating comments in order to cut down on spam. That way they won't be expecting their comment to be immediately published. 

I'm very sorry if you've been frustrated leaving me a comment. Rest assured that if you do leave me a comment, I DO see it, and I do everything I know to publish it to my blog post. Sometimes this takes me a few days. Mwah!

Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy! LITS!*

*Life is too short!

To open the pop-up comment box that let's you jump to the end w/o scrolling: Click CTL + Home. Click the Home tab under my blog banner which resets the post. Click Page Down to reach the end of the post. Click Comments and a pop-up box opens. Click "Jump to Comment Form" and wallah, no more car pool tunnel! Mwah! (p.s. If you ask me a question in your comment, please remember to leave me your email address so I can respond. Thank you!)