Particle System without libraries?

Are there any good particle systems that are effective/good-looking that don’t utilize LWJGL, OpenGL, etc.? I realize that there are plenty of good particle systems with the usage of these libraries, but I’m not wanting to make the full transition to these yet; I would like to stay with Java2D. Does anyone have code for good particles, or a step in the right direction to making somewhat professional ones? Thank you.