Custom Featured Blog Post

Hey MikeTandySwag,
Thanks for the mockup, I recommend using the Masonry Element with the Display Title and Excerpt and Display as centered overlay (overlays the image) selected:

then under styling choose a Large Gap and Perfect Grid:

Then under the Advanced tab ▸ Developer Settigs add the custom class custom-masonry-with-button, note that you do not add the class dot:

For my example I choose to use two columns and only show four posts.
Then add this CSS in your Enfold Theme Options ▸ General Styling ▸ Quick CSS field:

.custom-masonry-with-button .av-masonry-date {
	display: none;
}
#top .custom-masonry-with-button.av-caption-style-overlay .av-masonry-item-with-image .av-inner-masonry-content-pos {
    vertical-align: bottom;
}

Then add this code to the end of your child theme functions.php file in Appearance ▸ Editor:

add_filter('avf_masonry_loop_prepare','avia_change_default_link', 10, 2);
function avia_change_default_link($loop, $entries)
{
	foreach($entries->posts as $key => $entry)
    {
        if($entry->post_type == "post")
        {
            $more 	 		 =  "<br /><span class='custom-masonry-more-button avia-button avia-size-x-large avia-position-center avia-color-light'>".__('Read more','avia_framework')."</span>";
			$loop['content'] =   avia_backend_truncate($entry->post_content, apply_filters( 'avf_masonry_excerpt_length' , 0) , apply_filters( 'avf_masonry_excerpt_delimiter' , ""), "", true, '') . $more;
        }
    }

    return $loop;
}

If you are not using a child theme I recommend the WPcode plugin this plugin supports PHP code snippets, JavaScript code snippets, & CSS code snippets, for this code you would choose the PHP snippet:

This is the expected results:

Please give this a try.

Best regards,
Mike