I'm quite surprised to hear of people buying expensive colloidal oatmeal for use in their soaps. There is a better, much cheaper way, which I wished to share. Hopefully it'll save somebody some money.
1) Throw some whole oats - not instant oatmeal or anything like that - into a coffee grinder or even a decent quality food processor, blender, vitamix, whatever you have. Grind until it seems like most is powder. You'll have some chunks, Don't worry about it.
2) Run this through a very fine-meshed sieve which you've set over a bowl. Fine, but not so fine that the powdered oats can't get through the mesh. Use a spoon to stir the ground oats around in the sieve, encouraging it to fall through.
3) Put whatever is caught in the sieve back into the coffee grinder & top up with more oats.
4) Repeat the process until you have as much oat powder as you need.
You will have some pieces of scratchy stuff left in the sieve at the end. Throw it in a sauce for thickening purposes (any kind of sauce), add it to something you're baking or into your smoothies (no you won't notice it and it's a nutritional boost), feed it to your pets / chickens etc, or throw it in your compost or dig it into your garden soil.
Don't make a massive batch as once they're ground, the oats won't stay fresh as long as in their whole form. Store in a very tightly sealed bag & put that bag into an airtight container in a cool place, or better yet, in your freezer. You can also throw some of those silica gel packs into the powder (the ones you find in vitamin bottles & other products) to keep it extra dry & fluffy. I save all of my silica gel packs for keeping my herbs good & dry.
This can be used in any cold process soap, or hot process or melt & pour for that matter. You can also add other nutrients / additives to this, like powdered sunflower lecithin, calamine powder, clays, milk powder of whatever type, finely ground herbs, you name it. Use your imagination
The same can be done with herbs that you find are making your soaps unpleasantly scratchy, rice (try cooking it first, dehydrating the cooked rice in a warm oven, then grinding). I lived in Indonesia for 10 years & the locals would often put their leftover rice out in the sun to dry it, which kinda turned it into a rice crispies type of texture. I'm thinking that if you ran this through a sieve after grinding, you'd get a decent rice powder for use in soap. It's worth a shot
