Experimenting With Contents Page Layout

I have began experimenting with photoshop in order to create the contents page of my magazine. I have two screenshots here, the top one has the illustrated background on that I planned on using, and the bottom image doesn't have this background. I personally prefer the second image, because I feel that the doodles are a little bit distracting to the reader. However, I am not sure if I like how my Contents Page is looking as of now, so I am going to wait until it is finished to fully decide if I like the layout or not.