Inspiration or Stealing?

I've been told once that ripping or stealing ideas from graphic design or web design is a great way to learn tricks and techniques. But thats idea's, not "tracing out" the design of course. If your new to web design, i think its a great way to boost your quality of layout or design. If your building these templates and selling them, i'd have to say bad plan.. but if lets say your working with a client that really wants their site to resemble one they like, I think thats ok to a point.

For inspiration i look at other websites (not templates) similar to what i am looking to make. I may find a colour scheme i like on one site and a layout on another. Sometimes i will just take bits and pieces from different sites and not 80% from one site alone.. Its more fun to create something thats "your own" anyways