hey lena,
the normal way you would do it:
You have an overview page where you add thumbnails of projects by clicking "+project thumbnails". These are clickable images that lead you to a project.
I'm not sure if i understand your third point. If you would like images next to each other maybe a good way to do this is to use the carousel addon. Just have a carousel with images inside. Or the fullscreen slider addon in "vertical" mode like in the second video here: http://laytheme.com/fullscreen-slider.html
Is that what you mean?
