The Jogger

The Jogger by ashlea-symone-m featuring a black blazer

Fall/ Winter Look

Fall/ Winter Look by ashlea-symone-m featuring a matte red lipstick

Winter Dress

Winter Dress by ashlea-symone-m featuring lips makeup

EOS Melanie Fiona Concert!!!

   
 
     
         In my last post I mentioned how I was going to see Melanie Fiona. When I say it was amazing, that's an under statement. It was a free private concert apart of 5 city tour put on by Roc Nation and EOS (famous for their lip balms). The tour included Melanie Fiona, Bridget Kelly and Elijah Blake. They are all great performers who are signed with Roc Nation. The concert was in a small intimate venue so you could get up close and personal with the artists. I am a fan of all three and familiar with their music but I was most excited to see Melanie Fiona. Melanie Fiona is one of my favorite artists, I will never forget the day she tweeted me on twitter (I almost died). I've done a post before about Melanie and one of her music videos.

Elijah Blake on stage

Elijah Blake was one of the featured artists. He is very talented and an amazing writer.

He's mostly known for his behind the scene work for writing various songs for Rihanna, Trey Songs and even Usher. He wrote on of Ushers hits "Climax". He is currently working on his work projects now. He released his first mixtape earlier this year titled Bijoux 22. You should definitely check it out. He also has a music video out featuring Common for his single "X.O.X." The video is featured below. 

 

Bridge Kelly singing "Empire State of Mind"

Bridget Kelly singing "Special Delivery"

So know Bridget Kelly for singing "Empire State Of Mind" with Jay-Z at a live event to fill in for Alicia Keys. She's been signed to Roc Nation for a good little minute now. She mentioned on stage that before participating in this tour she had been on tour opening for Mary J Blige. She has been currently working on her up coming album. Earlier this summer she had a single out featuring Kendrick Lamar titled "Street Dreamin".  One of my other favorite songs by her is "Special Delivery". Here's her video featuring Kendrick Lamar below.

Pics of Melanie Fiona performing!

Miss Melanie Fiona!!!! Where do I begin? Like I said before she's one of my favorite artists. She is an amazing artist but even better live. She was very nice and would interact with the crowd and also performed some of her new music for us.  She performed some of her hits like: "It Kills Me", "Gone and Never Coming Back", her song with Cee Lo "Fool For You", "Wrong Side Of A Love Song" and more. I felt really blessed to see one of my favorite artist in an intimate concert for free can't get any better than that. I will definitely try to see her again in concert. Here's one of her video's "Wrong Side Of A Love Song" which was directed by Larenz Tate. (her Grammy nominated single)

                                          

Long Over Due!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Where do I begin...It's been a while since my last post. Sorry I've been busy getting settled in New York and in my new apartment. So I'll try and make this post short but sweet. Here is what I've been up to the past few months besides working.                                                                                                                                                                                   

(left to right) Joy Adaeze, Stylish woman #1, Stylish woman #2

  Mercedes Benz Fashion Week New York was back in September and I had the opportunity to volunteer again. I had a great time at the shows and got to see the fashion designs up close. I must say I felt very overwhelmed and inspired all at the same time. My inner designer ego was screaming at me to get back to sewing and creating new projects. After the shows I got to hang out outside Lincoln Center. I took a few random pics of people for the street styles. While taking pics I ended up meeting a fashion blogger named Joy Adaeze. She is a well known fashion blogger, writer and stylist. She's had many publications with ESSENCE, Covergirl, and WWD and more. Some of her recent work has been in ESSENCE and The Huffington Post. She also runs her own fashion blog called Joylovesfashion.com  It was a pleasure meeting her maybe we'll cross paths again in the future. (pictured above)

Pics from the Festival

 A few weeks after Fashion Week I went to the Dumbo Art Festival. It was located in Dumbo, Brooklyn. You had local artist and vendors all over the streets. While there I happened to see that there was a designer pop-up shop going on. I ventured into this basement like room to the see the designs and sketches of designer Kathlin Argiro. She had amazing sketches and  pieces. The sketches in the photo collage are some of her works.

 I  also got a chance to see Diana Nyad swim some of her 48 hour marathon in Herald Square in New York. Herald Square is a popular tourist area and also two blocks from my job. I wondered over to see what everyone was looking at. It was Diana Nyad a 64 yr old swimmer who is a known for holding a world record for long- distance swimming. She was swimming in the marathon to raise money to benefit the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

 In between my different adventures here and there I got the chance to attend my boss's baby shower. It was a lovely shower and I had a great time. I almost felt like I had stepped into Pinterest. Her sister did an amazing job decorating and the food was delicious. I got a bunch of ideas for the next party or event I plan.

One last thing before I go I am soooo excited to be going to see one of my favorite artist Melanie Fiona tomorrow/ today along with Bridget Kelly and Elijah Blake. All three are very talented artist and I hope to get good pictures so I can write a post about the concert.

New Season, New Journey!!

Hi everyone!!! I hope everyone enjoyed their summer...sadly it has come to an end. I'm going to make this post some what brief but delightful. I know it has been a while since I had my last post. Well now I'm going to catch up on what all I have been doing. So I recently graduated from Georgia Southern University.GO EAGLES!!    


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Since then I have had a lot of time of my hands to figure out my next move. Let's just say I spent a lot of my days sleeping and watching old reruns of 90210 and Veronica Mars. During that time I also discovered a new hobby/ talent of mine and that was jewelry making. I always wanted to try making jewelry so I figured why not, I had plenty of time now. So before I started anything I would go on Pinterest to get ideas and how to tutorials. I started off by making glass bead bracelets. I made one and then that turned into twenty. My mom had told me that the bracelets were very nice and that I should try to sell them. So she took some to work and sold some to her co-workers and her friends. Next thing you know it went from bracelets to earrings and even necklaces. I made a good little amount  of money off of my jewelry. I do plan on continuing to make jewelry and selling it so please be on the lookout for more updates about that.

   Also during that time I was looking for a job. Being a college graduate at home got old to me and I needed to be out working somewhere. I was thankful enough to have been offered a position with this company called Ideeli (the company I interned for this past Spring).They offered me an entry level position as a Outbound Samples Coordinator. So I packed up and moved back to New York!

On the way to New York!!

the lovely view from our corporate office @ New York Times Building

 In that  role I am responsible for sending the samples back to the vendors or our warehouse long story short. I  have now been working for two weeks now and I really enjoy joy it. Now that my life seems some what stable, I'm on the hunt for an apartment in New York...pray for me! Also I will be volunteering at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week again. So my next post will be relating to that and my other adventures around the city. Like I said this was going to be brief I'll have another post soon!!


**P.S. If you have purchased jewelry from me or would like to please email me  at ashlea.symone@gmail.com so I can create a email list for updates!! I have a lot of new stuff coming :)

Pleated Maxi Skirt!!!

So I am back at it again! Another D.Y.O (Do Your Own) tutorial. First off I would like to thank everyone that took the time to look at my last post, I hope you enjoyed it. My new project was not the easiest but you can still do it, no patterns are required to make this pleated maxi skirt. The materials I used are based off my size and height. I am a size 6-8 at 5'1 1/2. I bought 1 3/8 yrds of the chiffon and 5/8 yrd of the jersey knit, used a yard of elastic, a sewing machine , iron and cloth cover. I had a little too much of the chiffon but I'd rather have too much than too little. To get the length of  the skirt just measure the length from you waist to your feet. To get the width you want to take your waist size or measurement and you can double that. **I'm still working on doing these tutorials so sorry if a few tips are missing, this project was long so I tried to make it brief.
                                                                                 
                                                                             Enjoy!!!

1. First step once you have all your materials is to pleat your chiffon fabric. The pleat size is up to you. I chose to do about 1 1/2 pleat. You are going to iron the pleats in and go in a accordion style folding. (I used to hair clamps to hold them in place when folding.)

2. Using the hair clamps really helped me when folding to fabric to pleat the fabric. Also when pleating/ ironing the chiffon you do want to use a cover cloth when ironing the pleats that way you don't burn the fabric.

3. At this point I have finished pleating my chiffon. I am now making the mini skirt that goes under the chiffon out of jersey knit. I used an existing skirt to figure out the skirt size it wanted.

4. Once I had the desired size and length of the mini skirt I went ahead and hemmed the bottom of the shirt. I made a 1 1/2 inch hem.

5. & 6. Once I had my hem measured out went ahead an pinned it so I could sew it next.

7. I sewed the hem down.

8. Once the hem was sewn down I sewed the sides of the skirt together. 

9. I cut a section of the extra jersey knit to in the waist band.

10. I put the cut piece of jersey knit with my pleated chiffon to make the opening for the elastic to go in. I used to elastic to measure out how much width I would need.

11. I then sewed it down, still using the elastic band as reference. I left extra material along the seam so I could sew the mini skirt to.

12. Once my band was sewn together, I took my elastic and used a safety pin to feed it through the band.

13. I am feeding the elastic by feeding the safety pin through. ( pinned the other end of the elastic to to the opening.)

14. I have fed  the elastic all the way to the end.

15. Then I took both ends of the elastic to sew together.

16. I took the mini skirt and pinned it to the extra fabric below the band and sewed it together.

17. I did a rolled hem on the edges of the skirt so they didn't fray.

** Instead of closing the skirt I left it open to create a thigh high slit by over lapping the fabric when sewing the waist band which can be seen in the pictures below. Enjoy!!!

I also have another little side project going on. I have started making glass bead bracelets!!! I want to eventually make other pieces like necklaces and earrings too but I thought I'd start with bracelets. I have been  receiving good feed back about them. I have sold a few of them, they're only going for $5 right now. As you can see they look great when you stack them so you may want more than one. You can purchase them from me or go to my Etsy shop www.etsy.com/shop/Probs3125

Enjoy!!!

 

Feel free to subscribe to my blog, leave a comment or you can email me at Ashlea.symone@gmail.com .