>>7994672you could try fully opaque shadows in the colour of the lineart from the wallpaper, I think it'd look better, but honestly the only thing that doesn't really contrast on your original design is the day number, and I think it's much cleaned with the cutout approach you had
I think you need to break up the design a bit, you could try giving the month and day 45 degs of rotation and aligning them on each side of the squares.
You could also have a thin, square border around it all that could then serve as an analog clock of some sort, especially with the new path option, picrel
