My sister is queen of embroidery and she carries a small stitch book with her stuff in her purse. You can get one at any good book store or quilt shop that carries much embroidery work. Look through several and see which gives you clear diagrams that make sense to you. Start with hand embroidery. couple things the Embroidery Queen tells all that ask---2 or 3 strands of floss is generally used OR you can use perl cotton instead of 3 strands--perl is a little more manageable but sometimes harder to find the color choices. Perl may be too "big" when 2 (and definitely 1 strand) is called for. The "Queen" also suggests that you use a VERY CHEAP muslin for the backing,and not a fusible as it's harder to needle through. The cheap muslin behind your nicer background fabric will "hide" your thread tails and knots.(because usually you will be embroidering on lighter fabric). If you don't use pre-printed fabric panels (which is a good place to start), you will need to trace your design onto your fabric--light boards are a nice luxury but taping it to a window or even us to a white table top and using a bright light will work fine. she usually traces with mechanical pencil. Once you get into very complex designs, you can purchase a water soluble product that you run through your printer and copy the design onto,then slap onto the top of your background fabric and needle through. Most of your designs can be done with a backstitch and a french knot--so start with them. Good luck--I'm not a huge fan of doing embroidery (like the look, but rather lazy!) so my sister embroiders and I piece and quilt.