Tutorial: Ordering EAGLE Designed Circuit Boards

SMD's are easy if you have tweezers, a magnifying glass and clean soldering iron. Take a look at this link http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/

Back in the day I built a couple using sharpie and the radio shack etching solution. I did two using the laser printer transfer method as well. After doing a double sided board, it drove me nuts- you have to solder small wires for your vias. Once you order boards once you'll never go back- it just solves so many headaches and possible mess ups. Give it a try!

When you're getting started, most of what you're going to do is be hooking up a microcontroller to various inputs and outputs. I'm partial to the ATMega series by Atmel.

I've never used the Arduino, but I've heard tons of good things about them. When you're comfortable with your ability building circuits that aren't permanent, maybe look into a PCB.

Take a look at the beginners offerings from http://parallax.com/. Stuff like the boe-bot and others. They will allow you to get your feet wet with electronics and circuit design.

After you have the basics down, you can start looking at the tutorials that SparkFun has for example to get some basic circuits out, and building them, learn how to solder (screwing up when you have 20 boards made is not that big of a deal, buy SparkFun's broken boards and play with them, I learned how to solder from my professor and have always had extremely neat boards).

Just take your time, and don't rush it. It is an absolutely blast to create your first circuit with an LED and blink it with a microcontroller.

The one thing I will mention is, get ready to decipher all kinds of data sheets to get the information you need so you don't accidentally burn up your electronic parts.