Fabrication and DIY electronics projects are new to me. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed and wondering if anyone has a good recommendation on getting started.

I have a project in mind that I would like to do that involves LEDs, audio and either a touch sensitive surface or a motion/proximity sensitive surface.

Any suggestions on where to start for reading, examples, etc.. would be great.

TIA

Your question is actually a common one. If you're not already into making things, it's easy to get overwhelmed looking at how to construct a project. It sounds like your project is pretty involved and ties together a number of different technologies. So... there are a couple of ways that you can go. One is to find a mentor-- someone that's already used to thinking about these sorts of problems. The other is to attack the problems yourself, one at a time. You want to use LEDs-- do you know how to use one? Attack that problem first, and be sure that you really *do* understand how to use them. If you don't, ask Google, look at some simple LED projects that have clear explanations, and so on. The Make Blog and its discussion forums are great places to look for help as well. Next, you'll need to learn about sensors, and finally you'll need to figure out how you want to tie it all together. If you want to use a microcontroller for that, we have some resources for that here even. If you come up with more specific questions, you're welcome to ask them here, and we'll try to help. But, it's difficult to give anyone help "in general" rather than on a specific problem.