You're welcome. I enjoy helping people with stuff like this. In the two instances above I wouldn't worry at all. I don't see any of the "unspoken rules of not getting featured" at play on either submission.
Custom templates, gifs and demotivationals (and even occasionally third submissions now it seems if all submitted at once) can take in excess of 8 hours to be approved. On the weekends it's even longer, and holiday weekends I've seen some take 17 hours.
Basically it comes down to when the mods approve these types of submissions. They do so only a few times a day for the most part, and then several pages of customs/gifs/demotivationals all hit the latest pages at once. My demotivational yesterday debuted on Page 5.
Selfishly, I also like when people come to me with this stuff because if for some reason one DOESN'T make it, then I can try to figure out why and know for myself or additional situations like this.
I'm feeling pretty sick today, so I may not remember to look back at these. If they don't feature today reply back to this thread and let me know.