Here is on of those less unsuccessful thumbnails that I decided t take further and produce a digital version of it.
Here I tried to manipulate with heading 'Hello and Welcome'
The idea was to position the ampersand behind 'welcome' in a way so that the top curve would align with 'hello' and the curve would replace 'O'. However when I started to do that in In-design it did not look as good as on the thumbnail. It turned out to be 'hell and welcome'.
So I added that poor 'O' but it still didn't look balanced so I decided to put it in an angle so that it matches the angle of that curve and doesn't really stand out of the overall composition.
(cover is still to come)