Finished the head light buckets this weekend. Ultimately decided that there was only one way that I could do it that I would be OK with. So, jumped in prepped, masked and painted the bucket lips. Took all weekend, but I can feel good about the result, and won't regret the end appearance.
For the record, I did do a test panel of sand blasting and painting. It looked good. From the top side the luster was beautiful. This would be a totally OK way to go. What I didn't like was that it "looked" like the underside of the plexi was painted, as there was a missing perception of depth and gap between the two surfaces. This is not what I was looking to achieve.
Anyway...once that was finished I got back to the wet sanding and rubbing out the paint. Probably about 60% done with first pass at this point.