You're correct, Blissful Blog is designed to show the featured slider only on the "latest posts" view, and not on a static front page.

Technically, the way you have the front page set up now is the intended behavior. Each time you click the "Show Older Posts" button, it counts as the "next page". It shows one post each time you click the button, since you have set your blog pages to show 1 post per page.

It's possible to hide the button with CSS, available with the Custom Design upgrade. If you do get the upgrade, I'd be happy to help provide the necessary CSS.

Hope this helps!

I'm using the Blissful blog theme on wordpress.com to make an artist portfolio. The front page should feature my portfolio works with the featured content slider. That's working so far.

However, it seems that when I set a static front page, which has information about the portfolio pieces that appear in the featured content slider, the featured content slider disappears. I have a feeling it's just the way Blissful Blog is coded, so I've transferred the information about the portfolio pieces onto a stickied post.

I want only this post and the featured content slider to appear on my front page, but what I'm getting is the stickied post AND my latest post after that. Is there a way to get rid of this? Under the Reading Settings, I've reduced 'Blog Pages show at most" to 1 post.

The front page of the blog by default will display your posts (not pages) in reverse chronological order, with the most recently published post on top.

If you do not want all the posts to show on the front page, then you can create a static front page called for example “Welcome” for your site and a “Blog” page for posts.
Choice 1 static front page
Choice 2 running page for all posts on front page
Which do you choose? It’s one or the other.

If you choose a static front page then you have to create two pages as I said above. After you do that you go to > Settings > Reading and make the designation change and click “save changes”.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/

Front page displays
__ Your latest posts

A static page (select below)
Front page:
Posts page:

kobenland ~ Yes, I've had widgets all along. I thought I could do it with the Blissful Blog theme set-up because I saw another blogger do it. I guess she did it in a roundabout way that I can't figure out. So, I switched to the Coraline theme for now.

I like a them with two columns so I can put my widgets to the right. I also want to be able to put a header photo. I did the Twenty Ten theme for a year and wanted to try something different. I changed it to the Misty Lake theme, but it really takes away from the clarity of my photos. So, I was looking for something else.

I'll figure something out. Suggestions are always welcome.

Thanks,
Lori

The reason for the large amount of black space in the slideshow is that it has to account for vertically oriented images, slideshow controls, and image captions. In your case the gallery does not have vertically oriented images, so the black space never gets filled.

Best,
Konstantin

Thanks
Alejandra

Blissful Blog offers a sidebar template on single page, archive, and search views

I'm sorry I'm not understanding this. I did what it said with Appearance>Widgets and it did not put up a side bar. It keeps giving me the one column width and not the two-column layout. That's why I'm wondering if the 2-column is an upgrade fee. I can't get seem to get that one to work, or maybe I'm misunderstanding how to do it.

I also tried it from the link you gave me before I posted here, and it would not give me the 2-column layout.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Lori

Widgets
Blissful Blog offers a sidebar template on single page, archive, and search views, and three footer widget areas on any page. You can assign widgets to each of these areas by going to Appearance -> Widgets.

I've been looking for a new theme like Misty Lake but without the Mist over my photos. I liked the theme Blissful Blog when I saw it on someone else's. She had widgets to the side, and a photo on the top, like I'm looking for.

When I tried Blissful Blog on mine, it would not put in the side column for widgets. I couldn't find how to do it. I went into appearance and clicked on widgets. They are showing there on my dashboard but do not show up on the blog. Is that an extra upgrade fee? If so, I couldn't find where it told me that it was an upgrade. The way it was explained, it sounded like the side bar widgets come with it.

Can someone clarify on this theme for me?

Thanks,
Lori

For this to work, you need to be using a theme that has Flexible Headers support, which the Blissful Blog does have.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/themes/custom-header-image/#flexible-headers