Well, if you are like me in that you have little or no digital imaging background I'm concerned about your learning Gimp quickly. I did a horrible job following the first tutorial because everything was new to me, including layers. Not a hard concept to get but rough to keep track of and not screw up when you are new. I don't know if perhaps you checked out a book on Gimp from the Library you might learn it quicker or not. Now I am able to use it pretty good but still some areas I don't know about. It's been a few months for me though. I've learned mostly by trial and error and just thrashing around in there. Hopefully, it doesn't show

Try the tutorials, especially anything from RobA (he's our Gimp expert) and if you can follow them through you should have some great results. If not, don't let it get you down, just realize it'll take a bit more practice than going through a tutorial. Keep at it and you will master it.