Hi Norma! I finally signed up for your website and was looking at your starter tutorial for GIMP. I just wanted to add one thing that might speed things up for adding elements to your LO.
Instead of opening each element and then copy/past-ing them into your LO, you can go to File-->Open as Layers. Then, when you select the file you want to open, it will open directly into your LO. You will not lose the original file either since you opened it as a layer of your LO.
I hope this helps somebody--it sure saves time for me! BTW, I'll mention my blog here and be sure to add it to my sig file when I finish this post.
~Jen
scrappygimp.blogspot.com (GIMP tutorials and general conversation about scrapbooking in the GIMP.)