First I familiarize myself with my swap partner, their custom ponies and also their favourite artwork albums if I can find such, e.g. on deviantART, Flickr etc. That usually gives me an idea of the general styles and themes they're into, plus I get to drool over cool artwork.
DeviantART is a great source of inspiration in general, being so big and varied. Of course I don't encourage anyone to copy anything, but you can always pick little elements and ideas from other people's works, to get an idea of the general style and direction you want to take your piece to, or just to get you in the mood for the theme. Searching for inspiration, I browse all categories, not just artisan crafts / custom ponies/dolls. DA is also useful especially if you're planning to do something that's probably been done before, like turning anime characters into customs or anything. No-one will probably accuse you of copying in such cases anyway since the original designs are not theirs, but I always try to avoid doing the exact same thing and focus on my own interpretation.
Listening to some music fitting to the mood would work, too, and I usually like listening to something while I work. However, I'm too much of a visual person to get inspired by that only so I prefer looking for inspiring pictures at the planning stage.
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