Just a quick post to show how you can utilize Degrafa and MXML to skin the MinimalComps components. Currently this adds just over 50kb to your SWF but it's on on going effort to lower this and minimize the dependencies on Flex classes.
My skin extends from GeometryGroup which instead of adding another DisplayObject to the display list it simply draws directly on the component.
I really like the idea of using AS3 for your component behavior/logic and seperating your views/skins using MXML. This is something Flex 4 is trying to achieve with FXG and it would be cool to see other frameworks do the same with Degrafa.