Good luck on finding a nice project to work on.

For further improving your skills, I suggest to dig more into the world of div's, spans and lists, and only make use of tables when appropriate. Furthermore read stuff about usuability, layout, color matches and text markup so you can inform the client about a good design, and suggest how the design should be rather than letting them decide what to do. Clients are easy to impress if a website design looks clean and userfriendly .