Oh the do's and dont's of life!
If your struggling with illustrator which it looks like you worked through it,, anyway make a jpeg of the illustrator file then hack it in photoshop for the placement of it.
Its funny I know some giants in the industry that almost cant even turn on a computer let alone use photoshop or illustrator, but then again hand painting isn't necessarily state of the art is it.
Some of the advice on do's and donts sounded like you were reading a page out of my book. Oh that's ok I hope I never stop learning.