I've found that patience is the key. It took me a while to find a tek that works well with the stuff that's available to me. It also took a while to figure out exactly what results I should be expecting at each step of the process.
My advice to the newbies is this:
<Advice>
1) Read the tek.
2) Even if all the components are listed at the beginning of the tek, read through it and write down each ingredient and tool used in each step.
3) Be smart, if it says you need a PH between 3.9 and 4.2 then you're not only going to have to be able to measure the PH (meters are cheap, skip the strips), but you're going to have to know how to adjust the PH.
4) Buy jars. Lots of them. Assemble all the necessary ingredients, measure them, and put them in the aforementioned jars.
5) Read the tek. If you're unsure of the steps, rewrite them. You trigger different sections of your brain when you have to rewrite something you've read into your own words.
6) Be patient, take your time, do it right, and let the naphtha dry.
7) Did I mention that you should read the tek?
</Advice>
Now that I finally found a method that works, I was overjoyed to be able to actually start sampling the fruits of my labors.
30 seconds later I'm stumbling down the hall to turn off the nightlight in the bathroom because the house is too bright from it. As I stumble back to the living room I kick a small round ball with a small bell in it.
The bell is important, because it wakes up the cat.
Everything is... amazing. Laying on the couch, watching the universe unfold behind my eyelids. It's everything I hoped it would be, it's beyond what I had imagined.
Somewhere my hind brain registers a squeak, but it doesn't process. Suddenly four little paws land on my chest, and my eyes fly open. My cat and I are nose to nose. I say "Hi", he squeaks a meow, jumps to the floor, looks at me and spreads his legs.
This is the point I kind of lose it. For the next several minutes I'm struggling to understand exactly what that gesture means. He very directly maintained eye contact while he spread his legs. It's got to mean something. And then it hit me, my cat is Ron Jeremy.
One of the things I love about psychedelics are the strange illogically logical jumps in reasoning. The world twisted itself up around the concept of my cat telling me something, and somehow the mental jump of my cat being a porn star, and thus his behavior of showing me his junk was perfectly reasonable completely righted the universe with bell like clarity.
And yes, this is exactly how it happened, as odd as it may sound.
There is no such thing as a bad trip when you open yourself to the expectation that whatever occurs is something you can learn from.