Welcome from Illinois. I met a fellow QB'er a couple of weeks ago and she supplied me with the following instructions for creating a signature.
Go to
http://www.mylivesignature.com . Start the signature wizard and go through steps 1 through 3 to generate your signature.
(Just as a side note, a lot of folks don’t seem to want to change the background color behind their signature. When you get to Step 4, you can choose to change it and the color of your font as well. You can even make the background color match the background color of the Quilting Board, so there is no perceptible background color. Where it says Click to change the Background color: if you want it to match the QB, set it at #F2F0C6 .
Then move on to the next steps.
See where the last page says: "Finished! The signature is ready." They lie.  Then it gives Your signature ID, followed by a really long number? I think a lot of you are stopping at this point. Well this number will not do you any good, because your signature isn’t really ready to use yet! Copying and pasting your signature ID will not work, as you've found out to your frustration already.
Look a little lower on the page. See where it says :
Want us to animate this signature?
Want to download this signature?
Want to use this signature?
Click where it says “Want to use this signature.” this will direct you to another page with two codes.
The HTML code is used for adding signatures to blogs, websites, e-mail messages.
You want the BB code, which is used for adding signatures to forums. So click on “generate BB code” then on the next page, click on “Generate a code for my handwritten signature”. This will direct you to yet ANOTHER page with your signature preview and then, below that FINALLY! "Your Generated BB Code for your signature.
Copy this code. It should look something like "img (in brackets)
http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/a whole bunch of numbers.png/img(in brackets again)"
Hint: Save this code in a file on your computer so you don’t have to go through the whole process if something goes wrong.
Now, come back to the QB. Go to your own profile page. Scroll down to the section where you write “General Information”. Paste your BB code into the box set aside for Signature. You can also add quotes under your signature here if you like. Now, click “update general info”. Check a recent posting. Your new signature should be in all your postings.
Good luck everybody!