Help needed :)

Well...first thing to do would be to say hi. This is my first post on these forums and so i hope to find a solution to my little problem. I'm from South Africa, Cape Town in particular. I'm studying at University over here and for one of my courses i have to create a snakes and ladders game in vb.net 2003. Now i know its not too hard but here is my problem. I need to make the back color of a picturebox transparent. Why i need to do this is the picture box contains a picture of a snake (or a ladder) and it is placed on my board. The problem is that the picture box then covers my board squares :( All i want to see is the snake, not the grey backcolor of the picturebox. Any help will be very much appreciated :) Thx Gimli