Creating a button shelf ala Maya?

Hi all, I'm new to Mobu but I'm trying to learn.

How can I create a custom button shelf like the one in Maya that will execute
Python scripts? It doesn't have to be a "shelf" per se, but that's the
concept. It could be a custom window or even a menu. 

On the topic of Python, how are folks here getting Mobu's Python to import GUI
modules like Tkinter or PyQt? Just appending sys.path? Is that the best way to
go instead of just using the built-in Mobu UI libraries? I need to create a
dialog that takes in some metadata and then renders the scene out