the Text property of control on winform is always string type, so if i wanna expose property of other type for custom control, i have to do the conversion as following, if i have dozens of properties to expose, it will be such pain for me.

  public int ImageGroupLength
    {
        get
        {
            return int.Parse(this.imageGroupLength.Text);
        }
        set
        {
            this.imageGroupLength.Text = value.ToString();
        }
    }

so, is there any elegant way to do the conversion?