Blacksmith Plans and Jeweler Designs are recipes that allow the two artisans to craft items for you in Diablo 3.
Artisans learn recipes through training up through levels of proficiency from level 1 to 10. Each level grants access to recipes for higher quality items. Training artisans costs gold and higher levels of training will also cost Pages of Blacksmithing, Pages of Jewelcrafting, Tomes of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Jewelcrafting and Tomes of Secrets
The highest quality recipes can be found as loot from monsters or from breakable objects and given to the artisans to train. They are not account bound so they can be sold or given away.
Once the artisan has learned a recipe all characters on your Diablo 3 account will have access to it as your artisans are shared.
Crafting with Recipes
For your artisan to craft from a recipe he has learned he will need materials and gold. If you have what is required in your backpack you simply click Craft Item in the artisan's interface and the artisan will do the rest.
A recipe never fails to craft.
The Blacksmith and Jewelers designs differ slightly in that the Jeweler combines lower quality gems to create higher quality gems so you are aware of what the end product will be.
Blacksmith Plans do not reveal all attributes of the finished item but the recipe does tell you how many bonus attributes the item will have. In that sense there is an element of gambling attached each time you craft the item. If the bonus attributes aren't to your liking the Blacksmith can Salvage the item back into materials or you sell it to a vendor or in the Auction House.
For a full list of all the recipes available to the artisans check the links below:
Gallery
Big list of low-level Blacksmith recipes.
Empowered Long Axe recipe.
Magical Skull Cap of Willpower recipe.
Recipe list and Empowered Long Axe stats.
Empowered Long Axe crafting.
The first full 3-step crafting example.
