can anyone tell me why there is a big gap between the bottom of the iframe and the black bar of www.accessoryshoppe.net i would like to close that gap somehow. thanks in advance

I'd suggest you start here, validator.w3.org (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.accessoryshoppe.net/), work out your issues with the HTML of your page, and see where it takes you...

A quick glance showed several invalid structures {i.e., your iframe is sitting in a TR, with no TDs, and the code with the repeating bar is in a TD, with no TR} that are probably throwing the rendering off...

Note: I linked the W3 Validator to your site. It is initially failing due to some spurious characters in your source-code, evidently. Get those removed, and then try that Validator again {and again, etc.} until your page validates.

<td height="120" align="left" valign="top" background="images/rep_2.jpg" style="background-repeat:repeat-x; background-position:top; border-left:3px solid #ffffff; border-right:3px solid #ffffff "><table width="100%" height="120" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

Looks like the table height is 120 pixels for just a little image. Not sure if this is right or not.

shouldn't be using height tag anyway..lol..not xhtml compliant. :) Put the height in the CSS.