I dont want to use subetalodge's layouts, I want to make my own. I see a lot of user/pet profiles and different samples of basic coding to make your own,but not so much with shop layouts. Im weak at css, decent at html..but i have a stubborn desire to make my own without stealing code...

any helpful links out there?

None that I know of. To be honest I think very few people do shop layouts because they're a pain in the ass to code.

Images have to be .jpg's or .gifs (.png's aren't recognized), and you sort of have to keep your code in a seperate document while coding, because certain code tags break when you submit it on the shop page. And even when you're done the layout might be broken to others because of customcss.

As far as being weak at css, if you keep a reference (like this for example) open while you work and use the inspect element tool in your browser to find out what the different classes and ids for the shop layout are, you should be fine. :)