for anyone interested, i can now make "masquerade" light armor - see the crafted armor picture, above.
here's the catch: it's only for level 50, and only the vitality/toughness version (hearty). (making different stat versions costs me a one-time fee of ~500 karma, which i'm happy to do if you'd like it.) however, it's still very nice, rare, light armor - and it looks cool.

i can make it for typically a few silver less than the trading post price, which is currently only about 15 silver a piece (i had originally planned on making this my money generator, but then the price of tier 3 rare mats dropped in half and so did the prices on this armor...). i do plan on at least grabbing the karma recipe for a level 65 and 80 version (probably cleric: power/healing/toughness), even if i never make them.
sadly, by the time i was able to craft it, i was 10 levels past - but i'm still gonna use it, dammit!

also, some crafting tips:
- NEVER craft in "overflow." you don't get the WvW bonuses that way.
- similarly, crafting on thursday/friday is the best time of the week right now, since that's near the end of our WvW matches and our bonuses are highest. saturday/sunday is a bad time, since they just reset.
- saturday/sunday is also usually (not always) a bad time to buy mats, since demand is extremely high. supply is also high, but demand tends to outweigh it in my limited experience.
crafting is still such a weird, mixed bag. right now i'm doing tailoring and artifacing and they could not be more different.
tailoring is extremely difficult and expensive. mats are so hard to come by that you'll never have enough by the time you've completely outleveled the content that drops them, so you'll have to go to the trading post, and that shit ain't cheap. (i got most of my cotton from 100%ing two maps!) you also don't really get to make anything for yourself since you can't afford to "waste" materials. and almost everything you craft is worth the vendor price only (although at higher levels this is slightly less true since fewer people are crafting that stuff yet). i finally blew over 50 silver to make a full set of masquerade stuff (and to level up from ~160 to 200 to be able to do it) but overall it has not been fun - especially for how much i wished i could do with it.
artifacing by contrast is a BREEZE, and nearly revenue-neutral as long as you're mining regularly. i'm up to 385 and i've probably spent a gold (total) to do it; i could have gone slower and spent a lot less. (up to 280ish i probably spent a couple dozen silver total. then i got greedy.

) as long as you are even a halfway decent gatherer, you can have everything you need and then some without issue: and the stuff that is hard to get is all CHEAP. the trick, of course, is to completely ignore making weapons and just focus on junk potions - but in the end it's a very viable way to gain 10 levels and have some fun doing it. plus, i've learned a lot more about crafting and the trading post. i'd recommend this profession for anyone: in fact, every single character should probably level this to max just for the cheap XP and then switch to what they'd really like to do. be sure to use the guide linked above!
so, there you go! how are the other professions going? i know cooking was supposed to be "hard" but it turned out to be SUPER easy and so they nerfed the ever-living crap out of it - is it still easy? do any of the other weapon professions have short cuts?