Sorry - not uv mapping. I sorta got that figured out. 
When applying textures to a model which say has 10 different items or objects in it, my problem is seperating each object to apply a texture to. All the objects seem to accquire the same texture or color. 
This is the main issue at hand, I have checked out just about all the tutorials, the wikipedia blender, blender.org and more. None give a definitive answer to either un grouping like bryce or give an answer about applying textures to single items in a large group.