To make a corkboard background in Elements: Fill background with a warm brown color. I used dark yellow orange from the Swatch palette. First Filter-> Noise ->Add Noise. Amount at 20%, check Gaussian and Monochromatic. Second Filter-> Paint Strokes-> Spatter. Spray radius at 1-2 and play with the Smoothness slider to get the effect you want.

Hint: Save a square selection of your corkboard as a Pattern fill (Edit menu->Define Pattern) so you can use it again!