Currently I am a moderate (in terms of difficulty) when it comes to PHP. I would like to test my knowledge by developing certain utilities using PHP (and maybe SQL). But the problem is that I am not able to find any example projects. Does anyone have any links or some small sample projects?
This is very easy to find php projects on google. There are a lot of tutorials too.
just think of things you see everday in the web, and try to make your own versions of them. A blog, a forum, or even a Q & A style site like stack overflow.
Try to look into existing projects (opened ones, such as PHPMyAdmin, PHPBB, etc.) as opposed to starting a new one to understand how they're built, the ideas leading to their core structure, etc. "Most" open and highly popular projects are well maintained and lead by excellent programmers/designers.
Source Forge would be a good place to find projects that you can play with and explore. Just pick a type of application that you would like to work with, and then use that as a search parameter. I've downloaded many applications just to see what they are, and how they're put together.
Good luck in your learning.