The British Nail Artist, Sophy Robson flew over to NYC to work with Sephora on her nail art line. She is an amazing artist and I was psyched when I realized I was getting the Cherry Blossom nails! Sophy is a lot of fun and had wonderful stories about her nail adventures. She is one cool lady!
CHERRY BLOSSOMS!!
what the shot looked like from my angle. We tried having me come right in but the picture frame wasn’t laying right. Eventually, we cut a hole in the bottom and I stuck my hand through and plugged the hole as they added all the crystals.
The fun day that I had with Lisa Logan’s talented fingers dressing up my nails for Cosmo is finally out! I had a blast playing hands for the gorgeous model. She was a great sport as there were a few lip grabs which is always funny, considering I can’t see what my hands are doing as I am crouching and hiding behind the model
Today was one of those deliciously steamy moments you see, when the Hero food is being pulled apart to show off the yummy that lies inside. The Hero food deserves its Hero moment and that is what today was about. We were showing off a new product from Lean Cuisine and it was a team effort. What you can’t see in the still from the playback camera is all the people huddled around the table. One prop guy on steam, the other keeping the food at the right temperature to hand to me the moment playback yells ‘speed.’
My giant bug glasses! These babies are handy to have as hand models are often staring right into very intense lights while manipulating the products.
Our super dooper glasses make us look like bug people! We say we have to wear these glasses because of the intense lighting but really it is so you can’t tell we are sleeping while sitting up at 4am. Jimmy Furino and I had a blast on our all night shoot in the middle of nowhere Florida. We shot from 10pm to 5am!!
There are 3 Lean Cuisine spots running right now featuring my handy work. The spot are all part of a ‘Book of Truth’ series that they are doing. Keep an eye out for Myth #14, #22 & #35! You can only see my hand at the beginning opening the book BUT that does not mean that I was being lazy for the 3 days of shooting last spring. I am working on all the food hero parts of the commercial. The ‘Hero’ of a commercial is the shot that shows the food in a state of perfection, the yummiest bite of whatever is being sold
You can see me showing off the cheese in the pizza pull and again in the fork lift. These quick little moments take a lot of amazing people to get right. We were working with some amazing food stylists to get the cheese so perfect.
I was very excited to see my Nutella Swipe on tv the other night. This spot was a lot of fun to shoot as it encouraged finger licking I am doing the swipe in the shot, spreading the Nutella on the toast. There was some time spent in the kitchen on set learning the precise pressure and tilt of the knife needed to get the perfect wave in the Nutella as it is smoothed over the bread.
Ahhhhhh Yes! These are the shoots that people associate with hand models. Whenever someone finds out what I do for a living, the first thing they ask (after the George Costanza question) is do I do mostly jewelry ads. There are a lot of jewelry ads, yes, most definetly…. but more often than not, I’m working with food… So I do really enjoy these glittery days where there are men with guns making sure I don’t “RUN! RUN!!” (as my friend Melissa texted me to do when I told her I was wearing a 30 million dollar ring on my finger.)
This was one of those glittery days for Glass Magazine. There were four guys with guns on this set. I didn’t run away
Check out the TV spot that I worked on with director Greg Ramsey. We had a lot of fun spinning the camera around. There was a lot of choreography involved for the hand modeling dance though most of it ended up on the editing room floor in post Super fun day and you can catch me poking my finger in at the end. I hear this spot is playing before the previews in a lot of movie theatres
Thinking about buying a home?? Ahhh! One day, I look forward to turning the key in the door of my own home. Till then I’ll turn keys for the magazines! Check out this month’s issue of Smart Money Mag for a great article for first time buyers and check out my key turning hand model skills on page 71!
The May issue of Paper Mag is out NOW Amazing nail creations by Naomi Yasuda!!!
Naomi’s nails are incredible, her attention to detail is amazing!! a subway sub on a nail!!!
Lookey the lil cheesburgers n fries! Incredible!!
Always a cool day to be Naomi’s hand model. I have a favorite memory of a shoot involving dangling chain mail from the nails and scratching a male models torso
My friend Nate Shelkey wrote a song for me! giggle! Love it! He is a freakin’ awesome and hysterical guy and a great musician too. You probably saw him pantless during the Superbowl in the Dockers “I Wear No Pants” commercial… or dressed up as a giant mouse in commercials for D-Con mouse traps. Nate pretty much rocks all around and you can check him out online here!
Drum Roll Please… Here is the Hand Model Song by Nate Shelkey!
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!
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
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?'
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!
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. :)
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 :)
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.
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 13th 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.
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!)
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
