My approach is more painterly. And I use photoshop, not gimp, but it should all work the same, or nearly so.
I use a rough brush, or two, (chalk is a good one) and adjust the settings for scatter, size and angle so the strokes don't repeat as much, then size it up to fill the space quickly, and cover the first layer (above a solid background, white or cream or whatever you want) with random strokes. I change the color/value occasionally, just subtle like--a bit lighter, a bit darker than the background color. Sometimes I like to make the corners darker than the interior space, to help keep the eye on the page if you don't want a background border, but that's up to you. Sometimes I'll change the layer style to overlay or multiply, depending on what I want, or soften the opacity if the contrast is too sharp. Can also adjust the levels.
Once I'm satisfied with the first step, I make a new layer out of it by selecting all and ctrl+shift+c to copy everything visible, then paste to get the new layer. That gives you a solid page so you can play with different filters. Sometimes I'll combine a bunch, set to multiply/overlay/soft light, with opacity lowered. To do multiple filters, I do one at a time, copy that layer, undo the history to before the filter, then paste the filtered layer on top of everything else and adjust the style/opacity and label it with the name of the filter (for sanity's sake, and so I'll know what works the next time), then click back to the solid page and do another filter. If I want the paper to have a distinct weave, I might put a canvas texture filter on it, or a water paper. When that's where I want it, I work on the border.
Start a new, blank layer on top. Normal style. Rough-brush the edges at 100% opacity to create a sort of mask. If you have a background image to use beneath the paper, paste it as a new layer and select the border layer below (the paper part, with the magic wand tool, set to NOT contiguous). With that selected, go back to the image layer and pick up the eraser tool (soft round, less opacity) if you want the edges to show through somewhat. Or just ctrl+x if you want it crisp.
If you want a pattern to fade into the page like the pathfinder piece, paste that image on a new layer (style set to multiply/overlay/soft light). Decrease the eraser brush opacity and have at it.
Finally, select all and ctrl+shift+c to get a flat version without deleting the underlying layers. You can reuse them and make subtle changes if you don't want every single page to look the same. Can be fun to add different types of wear to random pages (torn edges, stains, dog-eared corners), but I wouldn't go overboard with it.
Hope that's helpful. Let me know if it's confusing in any way. I might make a photo tutorial to go along with it, if I can find time. Doubtful.
There are lots of ways to get the same result. Just look at a bunch of the tutorials floating around the web and find something that feels comfortable.
EDIT: Here's an example of what you can get with this technique. Did this one today; it's a wip for a recent request in the forum. You probably won't want yours appearing quite as aged as this, but that's basically a matter of less contrast and color variability. The filters I used for this were water paper and film grain. Oh, and note that this picture is only 25% of the working file size. http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...9&d=1339393191
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