I am creating a property sheet shell extension and want to have a little icon to set off my property tab from the standard system tabs. Unfortunately, my icon is being rend
Instead of Property Sheets, you can use Tab Control, which makes tabs management more flexible and clear. And of course you can use any type of icons, because you have to create your own ImageList.
Here you can read about Tab Controls:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb760548(v=vs.85).aspx
And here you can access example usage of Tab Controls:
Icons in Win32 Property Pages are ugly - 4 bit icons