First, working apps are big: put them on Heroku, link them up. I don't care how "straightforward" or "noob" they may seem, I want to know you're capable of shipping working products. If you can only get me 90% of the way to a solution, having to solve the last 10% for you on a regular basis makes you far less valuable to my team. Blog about the challenges or one interesting aspect of each of these projects: even 3 paragraphs can show me you know how to communicate technical things.
Second, GitHub all the things. Show that you know the "full stack": front-end markup, data modeling, a bit of jQuery can't hurt. HAML/SCSS are all the rage, not too difficult to pick up, and show you're "hip."
Third, go to Rails meetups: in Austin, we have a hacknight every Tuesday, and a monthly Rails meetup. If I've worked on a problem with you over a beer, your resume will naturally gravitate to the top when I have an opening.
All of those things are doable over weekends and evenings, and running with just these three tasks for 6 weeks would put you, in my experience, a hundred miles ahead of everybody else looking for a junior position.
Good luck man.
