squashed, or oval shaped spines to start with. practice is good, even mandatory. the spiral must be very good to start with. if not, the entire work will suffer. i think your design is a bit complex. perfect the basic before you attempt more advanced design. this design could become nice (imho) if more work was done to effect a few changes.
I like the overall design. I know I could not do as well in either design or execution. A few sparkles in the background, lumps and bumps here and there, a few foldovers that don’t fold right and an overall lack of shading. Like I say I can’t do that well myself but that’s what my purely amateur eyes see.