A light tent will help. Or you could use the lasso or magic wand tool to make a selection around the object you want to isolate. You could also create a new layer in Elements 5 and use the pencil or brush tool to trace around the object that you want to isolate. Then select the solid color image outline that you created with the pencil or brush tool and hit delete.

After this, make sure that the selection of the deleted object is still on the screen and switch layers to the image you want to isolate. Use ctrl+shift+i to reverse your selection. Then hit delete and your image will be isolated over whatever color you like(create another layer for your background color). This is a bit different in Photoshop CS(clipping paths), but it will work in Elements 5. Hopefully, I made some sense. You could also just use the brush tool to "wing it" if you like.