Pre-zoomed artwork often gets a lot of "no" votes, which means those pieces have a hard time reaching a "yes" consensus from the public. Don't pre-zoom your stuff, PJ has a zoom feature so it's best to upload at 1x.

I'm not sure why your Easter Egg piece hasn't been approved, but it might be because the preview is pre-zoomed and cropped mid-pixel. Preview images are generally subject to the same standards as the full piece.

Lastly, one of PJ's most active mods isn't around currently, so things are taking longer to get through the queue than normal. There are still mods though, so public queue votes are the biggest factor for things taking more than a few days to be accepted.

Moderators have the final say, so it's not entirely vote-based.
They use the votes and comments to determine whether a piece needs a closer look, whether it has issues they missed on their cursory look.
The voting also gives them an idea of what the community considers acceptable or not. For example, pre-zooming isn't actually against the rules, but the community is generally against it. The votes allow them to adjust their moderating style (and potentially the rules) to reflect the changing community.