Yes, well, that's very specific and helpful of you. /sarcasm
I was just coming back to post that I have found the answer myself: I am using eclipse. When you specify where to find the custom texture files, it is looking in MCP\eclipse\Client\bin as the starting point. Since no one bothered to say this anywhere in any tutorials I've seen, it's a bit of a mystery until you figure it out yourself.
Maybe someone else will have this problem and find this post and find the solution posted here, in clear text, and rejoice that someone bothered to actually post the solution to this problem.
Uhhhh. It was specific of him, and he told you the exact solution...
"minecraft cant find your textures" - Admittedly slightly helpful. He has eliminated the possibility that minecraft was finding them but just wasn't using them.
"Put them in the class path" - Sure would be dandy if he had been more specific here. If someone doesn't know where this class path is, that's not very helpful.
"correctly" - Lovely. If I knew the "correct" way, I wouldn't be having a problem and asking about it. Kid is falling down while trying to ride a bicycle? Tell him to "ride it correctly". That'll help him.
Anyway, my problem is solved so I'm getting out of here. I just thought it'd be nice if somewhere on the internet the solution to this problem was posted in clear, plain text rather than
A) the many pages where the question is asked but not answer is given (found plenty of those)
or
B) people give high-level answers without specifics (found here.)
Later guys.