Grendel,
I wish you had posted that a few hours ago.

I came up with about the same thing
thank you
I ran a few test of my own this afternoon, and I think it will work fine. I just created a cube with one of the top edges extruded out slightly. Then like Grendel said, I UV mapped it and created shading domains. so that i can control the different faces
I think I can end up with the look that I want