Painting - painting over caulk

I repaired some hairline cracks in my drywall using Dap Alex Dynaflex 320 caulk. It claims to be paintable, and claims to dry clear (it comes out of the tube white).

Because the cracks were so thin, applying the caulk led to lots of overflow, which was wiped away. But after 10-15 minutes, you could see there was still a thin layer of caulk on the painted surface surrounding the cracks.

It has been about 36 hours now since the caulk was applied, and you can still see discoloration between the regular painted surface, and the area around both sides of the crack with a thin layer of caulk (it has a "wet" look to it).

My initial plan was to just paint over the crack line once the caulk cured. But now that the caulk covers more than just the crack (probably 1 to 1.25" area to the left and right of the crack), that probably won't look right.

Should I try to remove the caulk that covers the painted surface? Dap sells a caulk remover that claims to be friendly with many surfaces (though paint is not mentioned specifically). What about rubbing alcolhol, or will that rub off the paint also? The paint is Sherman Williams latex. I'm guessing that painting over the whole area with caulk probably won't look good.

Even before this happened, I was considering repainting this room next summer. But in the meantime I still want to fix it up for now.

Thanks for any tips/suggestions.

Try this. First remove as much of the caulk as you can. You can probably try sanding the areas of concern. You should be able to get the area smoothed down. It sounds like you used a lot of caulk for a small problem.. Try a medium grit sanding sponge and see if that works good for the sanding. Don't use caulk for this type of crack use lightweight spackle compound, You should only need enough whereas you can skim in on over the crack line. Let it dry and sand it smooth if you need to.

I will try to remove as much of the excess (not in the crack) caulk as possible.

It was suggested that I use caulk over compound due to the flexibility; as compound could crack again, but caulk should be more tolerant to movement.