practical planning for jacking in job - any web designers out there - what would you recommend

[jeangenie]

I'm seriously hacked off at work and planning my exit strategy
don't want to go straight into another company job for various reasons but am considering trying to get some freelance web design/construction graphic design work in due course
now I am creative (have fine art degree) and also technoliterate (have computer science degree and worked as a software engineer for 3 years back in the dark ages) but have been working in IT management for last 10 years so feel a bit distant from the coalface so to speak - I would like to start getting my hands dirty again
what would you recommend as a strategy to train myself up so that I would be able to begin offering my services in the web design (or construction, coding would be ok as long as I know which tools to learn)or graphic design domain?
If anyone does this for a living and would like to help me by farming out jobs to me I'd be happy to do something FoC with a bit of guidance from you in order to train myself up
I will be eternally grateful to anyone who plays any part no matter how tiny in getting me out of the job I am currently in [hopeful grovel emoticon]

technical question how do you get to produce those kind of results from the ecommerce software in question because nine times out of ten the sites you see are rubbish and er basic

the other thing is that I can't afford dreamweaver and photoshop as an experiment to practice on

Lots of Java, by the looks of it... have a look at the page sources.

I got DW and PS when I was at uni, so MUCH cheaper... have a look for open source equivalents, there are always some out there. Have a look at this

Sorry, must dash!

hello again zippi, littlelapin, nopuds
am slowly working my way through all the bits and pieces of great advice here
I googled CSS and came to this site which seems (so far) quite good - am half way through my first primer while DH puts the kids to bed
anyone else used it before?
definately up for a friendly non-scary support group, presumably, with time, I'd be able to offer some as well as suck it out
I have lots of techy friends (well, colleagues currently) maybe I need to persaude one of them to leave work too and come and help in my little startup...(a girl can dream no?)