next move will be to get rid of all the decoration from the surround of the display, either by painting over it, removing the decals fron the back of the front plastic, or replacing the entire front plastic with something else. when I'm done it'll be almost entirely black.
i was able to clean the adhesive from the reverse of the original polarising film from the display and reverse it, so, so far the additional cost for the mod is still labour only.
@FuchsiaShock seems like that'd be fairly straightforward, although it is a pretty small component to solder, it's 0805 OptoSupply makes nice pastel colors (including pink)