how do you customize your own skin for wordpress like www.gunsgobang.org or http://begrudged.org/ ?

if your a beginner, make sure you have a week or two free completely devoted to coding your layout. Here's twos sites that will help you greatly

http://www.codex.wordpress.org

&&

http://sillyish.jemjabella.co.uk/wptheme.php

If you have a html layout precoded, I wouldn't mind making it into a wordpress theme, but it would have to wait until next Tuesday before I can start.

i have a simple layout coded with css and some divs..

i was also wanting to do this but i dont understand the whole deal with the loop and how to integrate it and then where to actually put the code.
any help would be grate

Here's the specific section of the wordpress documentation that deals with this subject:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_Design_and_Layout

The Loop is just the part where all your posts go. The code inside The Loop is what you want each one of your posts to look like.

There's a tutorial for making your own wordpress themes at http://bouncy-bubbles.net :)