Agreed, getting familiar with the basics is a must, Maya layers are very different from Maya shader/materials so that in itself could have been a source of confusion. Also, did you change the "lambert1" color? If thats the case, you may want to change it back to default gray and avoid editing that in the future because every new piece of geometry you create will use that material automatically and it could prove to be really annoying to have have every sphere, cube you make in that scene be mushroom colored be default lol.