Haven't tried it because I personally hate the Mint menu but I did want to thank you for the time and effort. I would love to see all the Mint tools ported to RPM.
As far as your question on creating RPMs out of the source, there are guides in this forum it should not be too hard. You may even consider submitting the package to rpmfusion.
(you would, of course, have to rebrand them. Maybe call them Linuxdork tools!

)