musikman, I really don't understand what exact is your problem. ??? 

If you want to make frames, it should be a good idea to use the templates first that came with MS (or are these only part of MS EX?). You can easily learn, how this works. The purple area signs the region, where you cannot draw (It's a MASK!). As you can see in my pic the 3-frames template is made in 3 layers and you can choose in which you want to draw. 

Henning