Welcome tasha!
You've come to the right place to get started. Take time and read through back posts here in the forums, And If you can, stop by and join us for chat some thursday evening we start at nine And usually her Royal Highness, The Princess of Bozonia [Looks around to see where the trumpets are coming from

] Has a topic up for discussion.
I do reccommend that you find a copy of the book, Creative Clowning. It's a great started book that covers all the basics, makeup,costume, history,character developments, twisting balloons, even juggling and unicycling! You can borrow it from most libraries. If you want to buy it, Amazon has is. I think I got my copy on Ebay for about six dollars.
Welcome again.
Scruffy