This is what I call expensive art! While most artists spend money on art supplies, this Ukrainian man actually used money itself. 29-year-old chef Sergei Nikolayev Knurov fashioned a detailed miniature ship out of a variety of Ukrainian coins. The final piece contains a whopping 17,000 coins, with bank notes for sails.

Sergei, a resident of Mykolaiv city in southern Ukraine, first started the project with coins from his piggy bank. But he soon ran out of material – his personal stash only covered the keel. So he began to exchange paper money for coins whenever possible at drug stores and markets, and sometimes with friends. When people found out what the coins were meant for, they were glad to part with their loose change. The coins Sergei used are mainly 2 and 10 kopecks, and the sails are made of 25 five-hryvnia notes.

At first, it wasn’t easy for Sergei to actually create the 3 dimensional model of the ship using just his sketches and notes. But lucky for him, his wife Alena is an amateur numismatist (a person who studies and collects currency). She helped him fuse the coins together using silicate glue, which worked pretty well. Sergei said that using regular super glue could have resulted in oxidization, but this way the metal structure will last longer.

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After seeing the blockbuster movie series “Pirates of the Caribbean”, Alexander Marchenko, a 38-year-old entrepreneur from the small Russian village of Cheryomushki decided to build his very own replica of the Black Pearl pirate ship.

Alexander Marchenko has traveled all over Russia, and is now convinced there is no land more beautiful than his native land of Krasnoyarsk and no people more friendly and welcoming than his fellow locals. Upon returning from his travels a few years ago, he decided to take advantage of the beautiful surroundings and build a hotel. He had noticed the other resorts and lodgings in the area all looked the same way, so he tried to come up with something special that would attract visitors. As luck would have it, the movie Pirates of the Caribbean was running at local cinemas, and as soon as Alexander saw Captain Jack Sparrow’s beautiful pirate ship, the Black Pearl, he instantly knew that’s what he wanted his unique hotel to look like. Although he didn’t have any ship building experience, he went online and downloaded photos and schematics of the famous ship to use as guides, and started working on it immediately. It’s been two years, and now, his own Black Pearl is starting to take shape on the Yenisei River.

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Chicago-based artist Wayne Kusy uses thousands of ordinary toothpicks and gallons of glue to create impressive-looking models of famous sea vessels.

50-year-old Kusy remembers he built his first toothpick model when he was just a child in the fifth grade. It was an Indian tepee and it got him a B+ in class, but toothpicks were to play a much bigger part in his life. He moved on to build a house out pf toothpicks, then a year later he started working on a ship that didn’t come out perfectly, but wasn’t far off the mark either, so he decided to build another one. And, before he knew it, he was pretty much obsessed with toothpicks.

Wayne Kusy’s amazing toothpick fleet began to take shape when he bought a plastic Revell model of the Titanic, studied the blueprints and deck plans, and spent the next three years recreating it with 75,000 flat and square toothpicks. It was impressive to look at, but it was so big that his small Chicago apartment could barely accommodate it, and there was no way to move it out without hitting the corners of his home and damaging the ship. The Titanic lost a lot of toothpicks on its maiden voyage out of Wayne’s apartment, but it taught the artist a valuable lesson – from there on he designed his ships so they could be reassembled from multiple segments.

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John Taylor is a self-taught artists who uses scrap wood, computer parts, hockey sticks and various other discarded materials to create unique replicas of famous sea vessels.

John has been fascinated with ships ever since he saw a photo of his great-grandfather standing on the deck of a vessel, during the Spanish-American War. He was only a child, but the obsession stuck with him throughout the years, and, as an adult, he began creating these unique models of ships he saw in old photos. Working from his garage in San Juan Capistrano, he turns buckets of junk (computers chips, nails, copper wire, lawn chairs, drift wood, staples and more) into imperfect interpretations of old sea vessels.

A landscape architect by trade, John Taylor will use any materials he can find that will give him the old, tattered results he aims for. “If it’s an exact replica, there’s no room for you to really wonder about it,” he says, trying to explain why he creates models that look like they’ve been fished from the bottom of the ocean, instead of making perfect replicas of the ships that inspire him.

The 3 to 5 feet long models are based on real boats, from Civil War river boats to World War II battle ships, John finds in old photographs.They are an authentic rendition of memory, rather than accurate historical replicas.

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David Reynolds, from Southampton, England, has spent over 10,000 hours gluing 250,000 matchsticks into a veritable matchstick armada of 20 legendary ships.

The 51-year-old retired oil rig worker first made headlines last year, when the Guinness Book of Records acknowledged his oil rig replica as the largest matchstick model in the world, numbering 4,075,000 matchsticks. But the matchstick master didn’t sleep on his laurel after this notable success. He kept on gluing matchsticks and this year he finally completed his amazing collection of 20 famous ships, including Nelson’s HMS Victory, the Cutty Sark, Queen Mary and even the Titanic.

The creator says he was inspired by the city of Southampton and England’s seafaring history, but the fact that his father worked on board the Queen Mary, and his life at sea as an oil rig worker also had something to do with it. He considers his intricate matchstick models a tribute to the men and women who  risked their lives at sea, throughout history.

Asked if he uses official plans from museums, to get every detail right, David Reynolds said that would cost him up to 1,000 pounds for each ship, so he prefers to use whatever photos and models he can find and do his own drawings. Each ship in his matchstick armada has taken between four and seven months to complete, and cost between 300 and 400 British pounds. The entire fleet took him around 10 years to build, and he says the hardest part was recreating the anchors, lifeboats and safety robes, as they take  tremendous patience and time.

Mister Reynolds discovered the art of matchstick model making when his son bought him a kit, when he was housebound after serious surgery. It started off as a hobby, but quickly turned into a passion that continues to bring him worldwide recognition.

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Sculptor Ian Brennan has spent 5,000 hours, in the last 17 years, carving a piece of timber into a miniature replica of admiral Nelson’s famous HMS Victory.

60-year-old Brennan, from Warsash, England, only became a full-time sculptor when he was 34, but in just five years time he became a sculptor of the Royal House. That’s how he ended up doing restorative work on the real HMS Victory, for about a year. As recognition for a job well done, Ian Brennan received a piece of timber from the legendary ship, which he later decided to use as material for a small scale replica of the Victory.

While you may think centuries old wood would be easier to carve, this particular piece of timber was as hard as concrete, and Ian had to much more work into it than expected. 5,000 hours, throughout 17 years, to be exact, during which he went through several pairs of overalls and cut himself countless times. Just like the original HMS Victory, Ian’s replica features 104 guns, 37 sails, flags bearing Nelson’s inspirational signal ‘England expects every man to do his duty’, as well as 200 feet of intricate rope.

Ian Brennan knew he only had one chance at doing something like this, as he would never again get another piece of timber from the original HMS Victory, so he made sure his 47-inch replica was just perfect. His family has been very supportive throughout the 17 years of work, although I’m sure his wife Suzanne wished her husband spent more of his free time with her.

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The Titanic, Queen Elizabeth 2 or Grand Princess were all very impressive boats, but when it comes to size, the Oasis of the Seas is in a league of its own.

Featuring a length of 1,184′ and a weight of 220,000 tons, the Oasis of the Seas is the world’s largest passenger vessel. It’s able to accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,000 crew members on 16 decks. The floating giant was commissioned by Royal Caribbean International in 2006 and was finalized on October 29, 2009, in a Finnish shipyard.

The Oasis of the Seas left its birthplace and is now on route to Florida, in the USA, where it will receive thousands of exotic plants, before its commercial debut. The plants will decorate one of the ship’s seven neighborhoods, called Central Park. It will feature trees, lawns and flower beds.

Other attractions of the Oasis of the Seas include an ice rink, a water theme-park, a fairground carousel and a giant shopping area. Until next year, when her sister, the Allure of the Seas, will be completed, the Oasis of the Seas is the only ships in its class.

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I’m sure most people think of container ships as just ships that carry containers and nothing more. Now I don’t know how many of you have actually seen one but these beasts can be quite impressive. And the most impressive is the Emma Maersk, the biggest container transporter in the world.

With a declared capacity of 11,000 TEU, the ‘Emma Maersk‘ is able to handle a significantly greater number of containers than any other ship currently in operation. It has a length of 397 metres, over 31 metres longer than the next longest container ship, the Maersk ‘G’ classes, and a width of 57 metres, 15 metres wider than any other container ship. If the containers on board were lined up end to end, they would stretch approximately 42 miles.

The vessel is longer than the height of some well-known landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, which measures 320 meters, and the Empire State Building, at 381 meters. It is four times the length of a normal football pitch.

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