I levelled two toons more or less simultaneously (meaning alternating while keeping roughly the same lvl) to 50, the money i earned with two chars from 30-50 was spent solely on my crafter so I kind of hit legendary almost at the same time when the first char hit 50. Then i spent a week taking crafting orders and used that money to equip my characters. The second char and future main turned 50 yesterday, need only a last Ring to finish off the temp and then I am finally rdy to RVR ( it has been a long journey, playing non-hardcore since the first minute of serverstart)

To get back to your question: If you finance crafting yourself with one toon only, you will most likely not be able to sustain it on a useful lvl for the first character.
Lvl 25-30 is a good starting point, you should get a few golds while levelling then, if you choose a job which can salvage later, keep at least all metal and wood drops from lvl 30 onwards and google a bit how much skill you need to salvage which itemlvl and do so when you can, you will get at least 10x the amount of the npc price when salvaging which helps finances a lot... also you can do crafting tasks (worth in total up to 1.6p until 600 or 700 skill i heard) which is a lot of running.