I made a plaster mold, rather than carving a soapstone one (which would be much more historically/Middle-earth appropriate) because I was in a bit of a time crunch, and I wanted to focus on learning one skill at a time (handling melted metal rather than carving soapstone). I used Elleth's star-in-a-diamond stamp to make an impression in Sculpy, then trimmed the Sculpy into the shape I wanted to form a template from which to make a mold. After baking the template, I used this method to prepare a plaster mold.
Instead of buying a block of pewter, I used some lead-free silver-bearing plumbing solder from the hardware store. It's not exactly the same, but it's close, and while it's more expensive than pewter by weight, I was able to buy it in smaller amounts as I needed it. The wire also made it very easy to snip off and melt what I needed for each pendant. As you can see, my casting equipment was very high tech -
The ladle was thrifted and my heat source was the gas range in the kitchen (with the hood fan on high!). Not pictured are the leather gloves I wore. After I got the pendants cast, I drilled the holes for the string. I was quite pleased with how they came out!
Like I said, not the most period method, but I learned a lot in the process, and it was frustrating, but ultimately pretty fun!