All Request Redirect to my skin folder------Help

[osgiedeprof]

Am a neonate to the entire world of apache and mvc devpt. 
I'm having terrible nightmares (over 2 weeks now) writing an 
.htaccess rule for an MVC application, such that all requests get 
redirected to a public skin folder.

the way i want it, All publically viewable files are stored in the 
/skin/ directory, and only these files should be accessible by my visitor's
browser. i.e, i need all requests to get directed to 
/skin/index.php?url=REQUEST_URI in the background (not showing the entire server path).

here's my application structure-->

- mvc
------ App_lib
------ config
------ models
------ views
------ controllers 
------ skin
--------- .htaccess
--------- css
--------- img
--------- js
--------- index.php
-.htaccess file

and here's the code in my mvc/.htaccess file -->

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule     ^$  /skin/     [L]
    RewriteRule     (.*)/skin/$1   [L]
</IfModule>


and that in the mvc/skin/.htaccess file -->

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l

# Rewrite all other URLs to index.php/URL
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]

</IfModule>

can't now tell why my local browser's reporting:

Not Found

The requested URL /skin/ was not found on this server.
Apache/2.4.9 

i've manually checked that the wamp/apache/apache module/rewrite module
is active, to no avail.

has anyone a guide for me ? or is there anything am failing
to include/remove from my .htaccess files ? please, any assistance
will be highly appreciated.............thanks in advance.