Simple Flash Question

Hi everyone, I am a Flash newbie, and I was having some difficulties skinning my flash mx (not 2004) components. I can go into the library and edit them and get the results I am after, but I am more curious about registering skin elements and so forth. I feel like there has to be more to editing these components than tweaking them in the library. Or should I say the right way, Fstyles, global styles ect.

I have looked for tutorials, and it seems that no one is consistent on the approach they use. Is there a step by step process, that someone uses everytime they wish to skin a component.