Okay, I've made some progress so far. I manually applied the theme elements over adb. With Framework-res.apk, I tried progressively* merging the files in the gingerbread apk with the original velocity apk. I'm not sure if this made the difference or if adb did, but *every* time I applied the theme, it worked this way.
*On my first attempt, I only applied services.jar, which worked properly. Second attempt, I merged the gingerbread images into the velocity framework-res.apk. On my last attempt, I applied the remainder of the files into the velocity apk and cleared the cache and dalvik cache.
While I was in the two apk files, I noticed some size differences. The velocity apk is full of "thumbs.db" files while the gingerbread theme is not. These are essentially junk files (especially to android). They are thumbnail caches stored and used by Windows. I was wondering if the size difference could be part of the problem with applying the theme. The framework-res.apk that I'm currently using has all the gingerbread theme aspects, but retains the junk "thumbs.db" files from the original apk.
The theme is working properly right now, but I've noticed two font color differences. The text color in popup menus is black, making it almost impossible to read. Also (though not really a big issue), the "Verizon Wireless" text in the notification menu is white, while it's black in your screenshots.
With everything *just about* working now, I can now officially say: Nice Work! It looks great!
Oh, and thanks to jake for mentioning the LP theme. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks pretty sweet, so I'll probably give it a shot shortly.
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