So you are trying to use the frmAppearanceEditor form manually, for your own use? Why? That form is used by the AppearanceControl when you open the Custom appearance property, it shows the preview and the property grid used to set the colors. You shouldn't use it for your own application.

Are you trying to allow your customers to customize the application themselves? If so, I might be able to find some help for you but simply using that form is not the way to go in this case I think, there's a lot of logic in there that involves the design-time serialization of the colors which you don't need during run-time.