What's that? You been rifling my albums, Straf?

You're more than welcome

Grass is a really difficult one to get right. That's why I have a couple of alternatives for people to try. You could try increased transparency, or mess with the colours. Another thing that might work better for you is reducing the scale of the texture. All you have to do is open the actual pattern file you created (it should be in the list of recent files), and scale it down, overwrite the pattern file, then refresh the patterns palette, and fill the layer again with the pattern at its new scale (or fill a copy of the layer, just in case it looks worse than before)

The number of layers can be reduced by using two main files - the first with the basic background layers, and the second with an exported png or jpg of the first file as a compound background layer, and its own set of foreground layers on top of that.

That way you halve the number of layers by splitting them between 2 files, and you don't lose any flexibility because you haven't merged anything down in either file. (Idea by courtesy of ChickPea).

Even though you seem to have doubts about the use of the texture(s), I think it looks great. It really gives the composition (the pattern on the page) a boost. Looking great, Straf