Cannot put clothes on

I am only new and I am finding that when I try to change the appearance of my aviator.
I cannot change the skin colour from black or white to flesh colour.
The other problem is when I try to make clothes, it is not working, and if it does, the colour is extending onto the hands and feet.
What am I doing wrong?

Melody, you need to use a texture with an alpha channel, uploaded as a tga file for clothing. There is a sticky in red posted on top all about alpha channels. There are also tutorials on making clothes.

Also, you are somewhat limited with what you can do with the appearance sliders. Most people that you see in SL are wearing commercial skins that are made by skin designers.

Jen