How to reuse icons (xaml-paths) in a large project?

Question

I am involved in the development of a large-scale Silverlight 4 project, where we will have a set of characters that should be used in different parts of the GUI (see example below).

These icons are made of several paths directly in Blend and will be used either separately or as different visual states in usercontrols (with the same icon used in several contexts). To facilitate the redesign of a single icon and its distribution throughout the application, what is the best way to store them?

I tried to create styles from them (right click → change style ..), but this allows me to create an empty style without any path data. manually did not put the xaml code for the grid containing the paths into the dictionary, what am I missing?

How can I easily save information about the path and style (color, stroke, fill, etc.), preferably in the resource dictionary, so I can easily reuse them in usercontrols and in other places, while maintaining an easy update?

An example of the icons I'm trying to reuse:

Answer 1

<Style x:Key="MyIcon" TargetType="ContentControl"> <Setter Property="ContentTemplate"> <Setter.Value> <DataTemplate> <Path Stretch="Fill" Fill="Red" Data="F1 M 24,13C 27.1521,13 29.9945,14.3258 32,16.4501L 32,11L 35,14L 35,22L 27,22L 24,19L 29.5903,19C 28.217,17.4656 26.2212,16.5 24,16.5C 20.1969,16.5 17.055,19.3306 16.5661,23L 13.0448,23C 13.5501,17.3935 18.262,13 24,13 ZM 24,31.5C 27.8031,31.5 30.945,28.6694 31.4339,25L 34.9552,25C 34.4499,30.6065 29.738,35 24,35C 20.8479,35 18.0055,33.6742 16,31.5499L 16,37L 13,34L 13,26L 21,26L 24,29L 18.4097,29C 19.783,30.5344 21.7787,31.5 24,31.5 Z "/> </DataTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> 

And then use a style with type contentcontrol (or derivatives):

 <ContentControl Style="{StaticResource MyIcon}" Width="20" Height="20" Grid.Row="0"/> 

All styles can be inside some resource dictionary: This is a rather informative article: http://blogs.infosupport.com/tips-for-effective-usage-of-resource-dictionaries-in-silverlight-and-wpf/