Hi Gary. I'm a new guy here too... this will be my second post (assuming my introduction post ever gets approved).

Mapping isn't so tough if you know what you want to have - There are some pretty solid tutorials on the stickied thread at the top of this forum. I would recommend that you figure out what you want, then try playing around with some of the free software that they have listed (GIMP, mostly) to get the hang of pushing pixels.

-Schyzm