This is a guide on jewel crafting that will get you from 0 to about 188.  It is based upon my own personal experience. I've invested approximately 3.5k pp, and my skill is now 188. First of all, you'll need to get a copy of a  trivial chart, or use this one:

Silver Cats Eye Agate     22
Silver Bloodstone            26
Silver Onyx                      28
Silver Jasper                    30
Silver Carnellian              31
Silver Rose Quartz          Bugged*
Silver Amber                    35
Silver Jade                       40
Silver Topax                    44
Silver Peridot                   46
Silver Emerald                 48
Silver Ruby                      75
Electrum Malachite         74
Electrum Lapis Lazuli      76
Electrum Turquiose          79
Electrum Hematite           82
Electrum Cats Eye...        84
Electrum Bloodstone        87
Electrum Onyx                 90
Electrum Jasper               92
Electrum Carnelian          95
Electrum Rose Quartz     Bugged*
Electrum Amber              100
Electrum Jade                 106
Electrum Pearl                108
Electrum Topaz               111
Electrum Period              115
Electrum Opal                 120
Electrum Ruby                Bugged*
Gold Malachite               146
Gold Lapis                       148
Gold Turquoise                151
Gold Hematite                 154
Gold Cats Eye Agate      156
Gold Bloodstone             159
Gold Onyx                       162
Gold Jasper                     164
Gold Carnelian                167
Gold Star Rose Quartz   Bugged*
Gold Amber                     172
Gold Jade                        178
Gold Pearl                       180
Gold Topax                     183
Gold Peridot                    185
Gold Emerald                  188
Gold Opal                        191
Gold Black Pearl            196
Gold Star Ruby              199

* Bugged items have an excessively high failure rate
** Not all gem and metal combinations are shown, I couldn't determine when they were trivial
*** Platinum jewelry is never trivial.

Alright first of all you need a place to go, me, being the dark elf enchanter kos in both FP and Qeynos, decided to go to Erudin. At the bottom floor of the palace there's a bank and gem shop I found this rather nice being that you can get money from the bank and deposit it all later. First of all though, you'll need to go up to the top level, and put 21 practices into your jewel craft, this will save you some money, not much, but it helps.

Now before you do anything, always remember to alliance the vendors, illusion erudite, and charisma buff (if you have it) yourself, so you lose as little money as possible.

Next, you'd want to go downstairs and purchase a jewel kit at the vendor, and if they don't sell one there (I'm not sure if the gem vendor has it) you can open the door, walk down the hallway, and the metal vendor should have one. From that point you'd want to buy a few stacks of silver, and then return to the gem vendor.

Start out with a gem that's not yet trivial, like Cats Eye Agate. hold down CTRL and click on a bar of silver, then click it in the kit, and the same for the Agate, then click combine (duh). Note, CTRL clicking takes one in your hand at a time, VERY useful! If you fail, then do it again, if you succeed, put it in a backpack. eventually your skill will go up to 22. Congratulations, It's now trivial to you, so move on to the next gem using the trivial chart. You can do this the slow way, going until it's trivial, or you can do what I did, and costs more money...

For example. we'll take Silver Bloodstone, onyx, and Jasper, trivial at 26, 28, and 30. Now if my skill is 22, I'll practice using bloodstone until I'm at level 24 or 25, then I'll move on to onyx until 27, then to jasper until 29. Why not make them trivial? because it takes alot of time, and each time you make a piece of jewelry, a sucess still costs you money in the resale to a vendor, and once you're just under the trivial line it takes quite a bit to get it to be finally trivial

Alright, doing that method you'll eventually fill up your inventory full of your jewelry, so what do you do? sell them back to a vendor. Continue this until you've decided you lost enough money for the day or your skill is around 48.

At this point, you'll notice a large gap in the trivials... Silver Emerald trivial at 48... Silver Ruby at 75, and Electrum Malachite at 74.  Now being that there's this large skill difference, you're going to have a much tougher time getting your skill up. Now why would you want to pay over 80pp an attempt to get Silver Ruby trivial?  You don't.  Go with the 3pp attempts on Electrum malachite, and this will cost you  alot of money, until your skill is about 74. You've now "mastered" silver jewelry. Every silver item you make from this point should be trivial to you, with the exception of the bugged ones.

At this point you'll want to continue climbing the trivial charts just like you did with silver, until you come to a skill of around 118. You'll then have to do another metal conversion to gold, only this time the attempts are 10pp each, this is where you'll loose the most money and get discouraged, but if you hang on, it can be worth it. From that point, ride the trivial chart up to skill 188.

This is the point that I left off at. My skill level is still 188 today, and I can make platinum jewelry although I fail perhaps 40% of the time, which is kind of costly, but worth it.

Also, some people neglect to see the simple and immediate values in jewel crafting. For example, a Silvered Saphire necklace is 4 str 4 int, and sells for about 200pp. your jewel craft skill only needs to be 74 to make these, and the profit can then be turned to increasing your skill even more.

For a list on what each combination makes when enchanted, I suggest the Tal'Kor Jewelry Academy, at http://www.eqportal.com/jewelry

If anyone has any questions or comments, contact Kealar on the Mithaniel Marr server or email me at striker@waterw.com

-Kealar, Dark Elf Enchanter of Mithaniel Marr