The background consists of three layers. The bottom layers is a vintage paper with handwriting on it from Karen Schulz. The middle layer is a purple artsy paper from Karen Schulz with a blend mode of Darker. I then used the underlying layer slider to determine how much of the paper showed. The top layer is a green artsy paper from Palvinka with a blend mode of Darker Color.

For the gesso, I added a small bevel so that it was not quite so flat on the page.