Go to brothers website and they have lots of videos on this, including the different matts. There are also lots of you tube videos on it too. There are 3 basic mats, one which is black and it has a thin layer of plastic on it and its just for scanning, then there are two mats that are sticky, one more than the other one. I'm not sure which one you got but the website would help. Also, register it and do the upgrade to get it up to date, they also tell you how to do that too. You can enroll in the scan n cut canvas website to create, and save, etc designs. You will probably learn more about your machine online than in stores. It is great for so many things and once you see what all these creative people out there have done with it, you'll be amazed at how great of deal getting it was.