www.google.com search for 'photoshop tutorials'

for windows programs, www.google.com seach for 'forger's win API tutorial'
that site contains information on how to color dialogs and give them animation and cusom design/layout.

as for advice, I advise that you never work on something too long becuase then believe it or not, you will lose your sense of what looks good and what dosn't.

and always shoot for symetry and a good color scheme (easy to read and navigate through)

Cheers.

I have to say - your signature pic. is cool.

You can also do a search for "Free Web Templates" on Google and there are lots of good page kits to use. I found in early days of web design that it was easy to take a template like that and learn how they did it with the code. That is what I reccommend.