I initially purchased one of these:
http://www.madcatz.com/sfxtekken/fightstickpro.html
The buttons are good but when you play with brand new Sanwas you can definitely feel the difference and the artwork was pretty meh. I removed the back and unplugged all the buttons and removed them as well as the balltop and got to work removing the artwork which is just a gigantic sticker. I spent about 4 hours destroying my dorm room trying to remove the excess adhesive with products that were on hand because I was too lazy to go out and buy Goo Gone. If you plan to do this buy Goo Gone. At this point I installed the buttons I had ordered at the time and called it a day while I looked for artwork.
Some point shortly later I discovered an art request thread on Skullheart by Soitenly:
http://skullgirls.com/forums/index.php?threads/soitenlys-art-thread-open-for-requests.108/
back before the site went down and I requested the artwork you see on the stick. She's really awesome and nice and you should totally follow her on twitter @anatoliae.
I got it printed by Arts Hobbies and got a plexi cover made:
http://www.tek-innovations.com/arthobbies/
Then I bought my current buttons and balltop and stuff:
http://www.focusattack.com/sanwa-obsf-30mm-pushbuttons-dark-hai-grey/
Then I just put it back together and it currently looks like this:
Ive broken a few balltops over time by sheer volume of use so we're rocking the black glass balltop to see how that does.