Jolene, welcome and thanks for the introduction. Hope you enjoy the site and find it helpful. Thanks for joining us. There is a lot of information on the site to help you get started and give you an idea of the basics of metal shaping. In sheet metal shaping there is only three things you can do to the metal, bent, shrink and stretch. Shrinking is hard, bending and stretching is easier.
Here are a couple of link that you might want to look at.
http://allmetalshaping.com/showthread.php?t=2926
http://allmetalshaping.com/showthread.php?t=3321
There are a lot of others that will help you get started.
The first thing that you have to learn in metal shaping is what the metal is going to do when you hit it. You learn this by working the metal with hand tools and not machines. The search function on this site is your friend and can be very helpful. If you have questions, ask and someone will try to help you.