Recycled the picture I used last July of Charisma Carpenter wrapped in the US flag, with some changes - moved it to side, added color gradient background and fireworks.

Could use some touch-up, but I already spent more time on it than I meant to. To get that background, I opened a blank image template and filled it with a gradient. Then I pasted in the image, and changed the original background color to transparency so the gradient showed through. Unfortunately, this showed up irregularities in my original background coloring that hadn't been noticeable before . Didn't work well with fireworks pictures, either; which is why that part has a solid black background.

Her face developed a bad "color cast" problem, too; looked pretty messed up. Adjusted the color curve and got rid of most of the problem. That was a tool I hadn't messed with before, and the help files for it were pretty confusing and intimidating; but when I ignored the so-called help and just started playing with it, it was easy to use. That seems to be true of many features in the GIMP - you make more progress by experimenting than by trying to decipher the crummy help files.

Here's the touched-up version:

Covering blotches in the gradient wasn't as hard as I feared, just needed to smudge the edges of the brush strokes. Also tweaked the color curve a little more, cleaned up some edges, did some air brush work on the face.