New Blog Site

HI!!! I've got a new blog site :)


http://handmodelusa.com/blog


Thanks for following, hope you are having a grand day.

Newsweek Interview

Check out the story on hand modeling in the high tech world of gadgets!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/227011

Handy in The National Enquirer

Searching for a spooky sighting this Halloween? Perhaps the return of bat boy? Maybe an Elvis sighting in french toast? How about an alien abduction?
The 10/18 issue of The National Enquirer has it all INCLUDING the Terrifying Dismembered Hand of Ashen Ghoulington!!
......well okay, maybe it's not THAT spooky, but check out the article! It's full of handy tips from Ashly Covington & Ellen Sirot, so make sure you pick up a copy of The National Enquirer the next time you're in line buying that last minute bag of "Halloween candy"
Its a boooootiful article!

Ashly on the Radio

On Tuesday I got to talk with Deminsky & Doyle from WSCX 94.7 in Detroit about being a hand model. The guys were great and I had a fabulous time chatting with them.

I'd like to invite you to check out the spot online

CNN.com Interview

:)

CNN.com Interview

Hamilton Beach Girl :)

Check out Ashly Covington on Hamilton Beach's new homepage!
Ashly's hands can be seen on the product packaging for almost every thing that Hamilton Beach makes. Very fitting that most of her hand was cropped out for this shot starring her FACE!
So for everyone who asks 'when is more than just a hand gonna be seen?'

HERE YOU GO! :)

Facebook Fan Page

To ask question of top hand model, Ashly Covington, become a fan at http://www.new.facebook.com/handmodelusa
and post your question on the discussion board.

Ashly will be answering questions posted about being a hand model, becoming a hand model and everything related to skin and nail care!

Behind the process of an Ad

There are so many steps to each advertisement out there.. From the concept to the creation, by the time I get to the set, many months of research, development and testing have already gone on.

I was booked for day #2 of a shoot for Samsung. day #1 was the face gal. They shot with me for a few hours holding the camera up to my face with my hair slicked back and in a few different tops. After they got several shots the client liked they combined the face gals pic with mine and that got them to the shot they had visualized. :)

KitchenAid

Just found this ad from a shoot I did last fall for KitchenAid. :) The shoot was out in PA and I had a blast with everyone.

Shop Smart - March

My mom found the copy of my Shop Smart cover!
Thanks MOM for getting me this :)
Check it out, on stands NOW!

Tom Chambers Photography

I am very excited to share some pics by one of my favorite artist photographers, Tom Chambers. His work is compelling and intriguing. I can still remember the first image I ever saw from his collection, it was a little red haired girl with a greyish stripe across her eyes in a black & white dress with a dolls head on fire.. He showed it to me 10? years ago and the images has never left me. It is so hauntingly beautiful. So I had been wanting to work with him for years, yearning to make it to one of his canvases. & finally on a freezing cold day, he had me leap about barefoot in the street and stand on tip toe and cuddle carpets in my old prom dress.

Check out Tom's Work - Tom Chambers Photography
He currently has a show this weekend. He is participating in a 4-person exhibition at the Chase
Gallery in Boston (Newbury Street). http://www.chasegallery.com/
So if you are in Boston, go check him out.


& no! I did not touch any departed animals 4 this :)

Theme Magazine

Next time you find yourself in Barnes & Noble or any of the Universal Newsstands around nYc take a peek at issue #17 of Theme Magazine!!!! The shoot was a fabulously long day filled with awesome peeps, rockin' nail colors, cool jewelry, paint and more. It was a treat to work for this beautiful magazine.

Breville

Coffee, Lattes and Espresso – they have always had a warm, mystical lure for me. Watching my parents cradle their cups in the morning, peeking into cafes with people relaxing in overstuffed couches sipping foamy treats. And the smell!! That smell that makes me feel cozy and wonderful.

I should be a coffee fanatic with my all-nighters as a theatre major in college and my penchant for overnight drives home to surprise my mom and friends in VA. I want to love it. But I don't. I dislike that taste even more than Buckley's cough syrup (which will get rid of a cough but tastes like death.)

I've only had three sips of coffee ever. Once when I was a child and my dad gave me a sip, I gagged and can remember being so taken aback by a taste from something that looked and smelled so wonderful. I had the same reaction in college when I was given a taste by a friend at 4am when we were frantically trying to get all the finishing touches done on the stage – same reaction.. *ack* *ack* Nooooooooo, not for me.

And then again, most recently when I was working on a shoot for Breville. The shoot was non-stop esspressos – the smells were amazing. There was coffee everywhere and for 14 hours I basked in the scents. Towards my 13^th hour, I was called to do a shot where I would create a Snowman in the espresso. The Baristas started the design and I finished it up, which called for using a stick to make the buttonholes. To do this, I had to insert the stick into the foam to create the first button and then lick the stick clean for the next one (licking the stick was the fastest way to get it ready). It all smelled so wonderful that I knew I would just love it. I stuck that stick in and pulled it out leaving a perfect circle behind and stuck it in my mouth and *ack*! Same Reaction. I was again just so taken aback by my sheer dislike of something that I want to like. *Sigh* I finished the Snowman's buttons and got it in the first take, thus saving me having to have that 4th taste. I drank some hot chocolate and cleared my taste buds and decided that I would just live with loving the smell. Cuz that smell is delicious enough.

Check out the hand stylings of Bruce Hawkins, Guy Veryzer, Genia Morgan, Alejandro Garcia and me :) My starring moments come from making the snowman and the ring of hearts! Lots of cup holding that day.

the Holiday Spot

the Love Spot

the Art Spot

The Oracle of Bacon

Woo HOO! I am connected to Kevin Bacon by one person in the Oracle of Bacon.
:) This makes me smile because back in college at James Madison University we theatre folks got really into the 6 degrees of kevin bacon (as it was called back then) and there were always long streams of connections going - this person to that etc. Ahhh the days of the vax.
So today when I was sent the link to this site
http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/movielinks?game=0&firstname=Kevin+Bacon&secondname=Ashly+Covington&using=1&start_year=1850&end_year=2050&dir=0&use_genres=1&g0=on&g4=on&g8=on&g16=on&g20=on&g1=on&g5=on&g9=on&g13=on&g17=on&g21=on&g25=on&g2=on&g6=on&g10=on&g14=on&g22=on&g26=on&g3=on&g11=on&g15=on&g23=on&g27=on

I had to check it out!

Ladies Home Journal

Bookstores and coffee shops are havens for models and actors in NYC - nothing short of brilliant to find WARM places to kill time between go-sees and auditions. The other day I was killing time in a bookstore and found 2 handy spottings both in the same magazine!  

:) Check out the Dec. issue of Ladies Home Journal

high fashion handy

commercial print mommy hand (the little girl hand model was so adorable!)

Scotch Fur Fighter

3M has done it again! They knocked my socks off and have saved all the walls in this apartment with the Command Strips

I have pretty much everything in this apartment up with those wonderful devices, they work great for everything from hanging pictures to hanging hooks for heavy winter coats, plus they are a breeze to take down and move! Leaving NO HOLES behind. I loce them.. so I was very excited to lend a hand on another 3M Product - the Scotch Fur Fighter.


I'll admit, I had an ulterior motive when I went to set that day.... I wanted to know how these things worked! You see, when I moved up to NYC I had to leave my cat behind with my mom. When I finally got an apartment where I could have Sortia (my kitty) well, that was when I found out that my mom had catnapped her! She had fallen in love with her though she was heavily against all the cat hair that now covered her favorite chair. Duct tape was pretty much the only thing that worked and that was quite a project to make work.. time, effort & a lot of duct tape for a clean chair up until Sortia would leap back into HER chair.
So I was very excited to see if there was finally going to be a product out on the market that could help!

When it came time to demonstrate the product on shoot day, you could feel every person on set leaning in to get a closer look. Would it work? Would it clear a line on the fur covered sofa? Action was called and I did the sweep and could hear the excited gasps from all around - IT WORKED! There was a completely clean streak going down the center of the cushion. ALL the hair was up. I flipped the product over and there was all the hair, nice and neatly stuck to the pad. WOW. WOW. Everything was reset and we did it again and it worked again and again. I had no problems in picking up any fur that was in the path of the Fur Fighter.

Happy with the results





After the successful day, I was anxious to get down to VA to surprise my mom. Sadly I could not seem to get a photo of her favorite chair that showed how covered it was in cat hair. Her chair is brown and it would just not show the hair in any of the pics that I took. She has been complaining for YEARS about how she has lost her favorite chair to my cat. Every time she sits in it..she gets covered. So I called her into her room and pointed out her chair to which she gave a disgusted grunt and said 'cat hair, hrmph!' I then pulled out the FF and she raised one eyebrow (i wish i was talented enough to do that) and grunted and said 'yeah, nothing works, you can try.' She sighed, being very dramatic, and crossed her arms and stood waiting to be disappointed. I did one swipe and suddenly she perked up, she peered down and ran her finger across the chair where I had just swiped. She grabbed the FF out of my hands and looked at the bottom of it. She looked at her chair again. She looked at the FF again. Then in a very VERY quiet voice she said 'It's a miracle' and then she stood silently in awe. My mother NEVER stands silently in awe. So YEAH! Thank you 3M for giving me the opportunity to learn about the FF so I could impress my mother. You have made her a very happy woman. She called me the other day to tell me she was sitting in her chair in BLACK pants - That hasn't happened since she catnapped my baby 5 years ago.


My mom also found that my cat loves to be brushed the FF J giggle

Woman's World - Oct 6, 2008

Check out the Oct 6 issue of Woman's World magazine (on stands TODAY!) to see another handy happening and for a chance to win the jewels. :)


here is the close up :)

Part of the college experience....

I'm back in college.. well, in print anyways! I got a hysterical text message the other day from my roommate wondering if I was stalking her - apparently I was staring at her from her Majority Minority textbook in one of her classes. She snapped a pic and sent it to me and sure enough there I was on the page of her book.
HA! I had forgotten about these photos. Back when I first started modeling after college I had done a stock photo shoot and as it is with those types of shoots never knew if anything had happened with the photos. Well, they surfaced again in my roomies textbook. Giggle.


back in my blond days. :) I'm the gal with my hands crossed over my knees in the front row. My roommate said the blond hair threw her off for a moment though when she looked closely at the hands, she knew it was me. giggle.

Posied to make a splash

Ah yes, I've finally done it. One of the blue liquid shots :) For this shot we had to pour, dab and then wring the pad. I worked with another fantastic hand model, Kara (she and I sometimes get paired because our hands are similar in size and coloring.) Everything had to be done at exactly the same time, in the same way. She and I would kick butt at a mirroring exercise, giggle.

I had the "Hero" product (the Poise pad) and she was with the competitors brand. I had to compete with the camera for space (it started on my side) and do all the actions with my left hand. I'm a rightie though in this business, you've gotta be able to perform with either hand.

so yeah! kara and me rockin' the blue liquid.

Lightning Bugs & a new Veramyst ad

The weather is perfect. Ideal, beautiful. I love NYC in the 70's. I love open windows. & I love getting surprised by a lightning bug flashing up right in front of my computer screen as the internet page loads and there is my hand in an advertisement on the side panal!
WEEE! I've been looking for this ad for awhile.

A Boogie Turns into a Booking

One morning my roommate woke up with a very sad face and asked me to "Get Down in Full Effect" to brighten her morning. At first, I wasn't sure what she was asking so she pleadingly asked again "Please, Please Get Down in Full Effect." I can not turn away from one in need so up to my feet; I leaped and proceeded to Get Down in Full Effect. I shimmied, I cabbage patched, I robot-ed, I twisted, on and on. I even did the elephant (a very obscure, little known dance!)

After just a few minutes she was smiling and I was inspired to keep rocking away and after 5 minutes she was laughing and after 10 minutes she was joining in for an impromptu dance in the living room. It was hysterical and a wonderful way to start the morning.
Shortly after I left for New Jersey to shoot a commercial for Snuggle. I had no idea what I was going to be doing as they booked me directly from my headshot for a young mom type of role. When I walked into the studio, they directed me to the mark on the floor and gave me the direction to do my happy dance. I started laughing and asked if that could also mean for me to Get Down in Full Effect, my roommates phrase was loved by all and they said YES YES!
Go For IT! Get Down in Full Effect!
The music started blaring and I started shaking and bopping.
By the time I finished, everyone (including myself) was crying from laughing so hard and then it was time to go again. Good thing I had gotten warmed up that morning! What a fun day

I'm the 5th girl shown and then in the middle left box at the end...



Enjoy! You can check it out online here - Snuggle Happy Dance

Thanks for Watching :) Hope you are having a great day.

Oral B

Props to Michina (an amazing manicurist) who found these shots!! I had never seen them before and really love how the final images turned out.
My fave is the one with the bird! I just love it.










Has anyone seen the ads out there?? I haven't and was just wondering where they might have run.

Hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

New Hand Model demo reel

It is finished!! I'm am very excited about how the reel turned out. The designer, Nastacia Leshchinskya did an amazing job. Kudos Nastacia, it was wonderful working with her..so if any of ya'll actors out there are in need of an acting reel, I can pass on her info to you. I highly recommend her!

I've got the reel up on my website HERE

YEAH :)
Or you can check it out here

Hand Model InStyle April 08'

YEAH!!! The Hand Modeling shots that were supposed to be in the March issue of InStyle showed up in April’s! I was very excited to find the mag today after being sorely dissapointed that the shots were not used after that endless though very fun (cuz the people were great) day on set.. I think I got out of there around 10pm at night after starting at 9am!!! Good thing I was working with such wonderful peeps and I am very excited with the end result. I’m loving these shots! So check out The Sniper *giggle* in April’s InStyle Magazine!

The Sniper

I got a new nickname on my shoot today... giggle giggle

The photographer came over and said he was going to call me The Sniper from now on. The Sniper? um..... Quizzically, I glanced up from my under my arms (I was positioned with my elbows on a rest and hands up holding the product and my head bowed way down? The Sniper?? Um?

He laughed and said "You are The Sniper because you can hold your hands so steady and you always get the shot!"

LOVE IT!

Oh yeah, I always get my shot – heh heh..

All Heart Family Cookbook

Look at me pretending I can cook - Thanks to the amazing food stylists it looks like I can whip up a very pretty and very tasty dish! (I know cuz I got to sample a lot of the food and mmm hmmm, these are some tasty recipes!)
The cookbook is out in stores now - Check it out for the amazing recipes and more handy shots!!

Bon Appetit Feb Issue

Check out the Feb issue of Bon Appetit magazine!
As always there are lots n lots of great recipes (one specific one for banana pudding that just looks delicious....) and great hints for amazing food!

Page 121 starts the Go with the Grain segment... mmmm hmmmm and you can check me out playing with dough. Worked up a sweat for that shoot, I had no idea how much effort it actually took! Check me out in action, kneading away....

Poise TV Spot

Just caught the Poise spot on TV!! The commercial starts with some gals out doing some shopping and the adventure turns to giggles when one dresses up in this pink boa sweatery thing -- heh heh.. thank goodness for Poise

I'm the Poise hand with my friend and fellow hand model, Kara as the leading competitor hand.

If anyone finds they have a copy of this spot, please let me know!! I'd love to have a copy!!!

Hope everyone is having a great 2008!!!!!

Ann Taylor Loft

The Ann Taylor Loft booklets are out in stores now!!! I found copies of the booklet inside the Style 101 book that was near the register :)


The booklet is on finding the perfect pair of pants!

Veramyst

Self Mag Dec 2007

I love it when I am surprised by ads in magazines that I purchase just for a good read, not realizing handy shots are inside :)

Decembers issue of Self Magazine has 2 of my ads!! The Abbreva ad that I posted earlier and this Veramyst ad :)


I have also seen the tv spots for 3M Command Strips (holiday version) and Veramyst on tv lately.

Thanks for keeping an eye out!!

Garnet Hill Gift Guide 2007

Found my copy of the Gift Guide waiting for me in my mailbox today!!!
YEAH!!!! Lots of great gifts on all the pages though I am a bit partial to the gorgeous flower ring that I got to model.

I am looking for a few more copies of this ad.......Anyone out there on the Garnet Hill mailing list? Thanks for all the support