First off, you should know that the token items you have to HQ for artisans are VASTLY more difficult than any other 2-star recipe. When they were released, crafters who could reliably craft HQ 2-star items with half-melded gear found themselves struggling to craft the token items.

My first recommendation is to have a full set of HQ gear, and then meld it to the fullest extent possible, with the exceptions of your headpiece (which you will be replacing with Artisan's Spectacles, so any Materia used there will be wasted) and your off-hand (this piece cannot be fully melded, so you will need to choose very carefully what you want to meld there). You come to 50 at a difficult time, as crafters have recently gotten three new crafting accessories (Dodore Belt, Mosshorn Earrings, and Rose Gold Choker), and purchasing these right now will be pricy. You could go with the old Best-in-Slot accessories (Raptorskin Merchant's Purse, Red Coral Earrings, and Electrum Choker), but fully melding these while knowing that you're going to be replacing them could be painful.

Note that Best-in-Slot armor pieces for any given craft are that craft's craft-specific armor. This means that you'll have to fully meld sets of armor EIGHT TIMES. You could choose to meld Patrician's armor instead which is usable across all crafts, but understand that Artisan token items and most 3-star recipes are not 100% reliable even with every possible stat advantage - any shortcuts you decide to take will make them that much more difficult.

Sound expensive? It is. Very. Especially with the recent release of new crafting equipment getting all the crafters buying up materia by the boatload. Still, if you leveled your crafts wisely you should have made quite a bit of money doing it, as well as stockpiled a large amount of materia from the equipment you spiritbonded while leveling. So, at least to start with, you should be able to meld at least one class to maximum.

If you're curious as to what the stat meld caps are, here's the thread for it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...p-for-crafters

This thread doesn't include the stat caps for the new Best-in-slot accessories, so here they are:
- Rose Gold Choker: CP 32 (Meldable: +4 Control, +4 Craft, +6 CP)
- Mosshorn Earrings: CP 32 (Meldable: +4 Control, +4 Craft, +6 CP)
- Dodore Belt: Control 31 (Meldable: +5 Control, +4 Craft, +3 CP)

To give you something of an idea of what you're in for in the case of the token items, if you start with all HQ ingredients, you still have to get as much quality as it would take to reach 100% quality on a normal two-star reciepe when you start with all NQ ingredients - token items have double the quality requirement that a two-star recipe does. On top of that, the Craftsmanship required is also doubled, or possibly more, meaning you have to use that many more Synthesis steps to get the job done.

Once you've gotten your gear melded, there are many, many threads in this forum discussing how best to HQ token items and three-star recipes, so I won't waste time rehashing them. Just browse the first couple pages of the Crafter's forum, and you'll find them easily enough.