the recommended way of applying thermal paste is to put a small amount of paste to the cpu, and use a credit card (or similar) and smooth it over the cpu in a very thin layer without getting any of it anywhere else. attach heatsink and fan and voila your cool (pun intended).
after u plug in the cpu into the socket, the surface heading top is the place to put thermal paste. For Intel cpu the surface cover the whole unit while AMD cpu only a part centre of the unit.
to clean your spillover, use alcohol and cotton swab or a soft cloth. Make sure that no excess comes in contact with your components leads and short them out. arctic silver is conductive and may damage your system if it shorts components.
Yup, use a THIN layer. Just rebuilt a friends pc (coz it kept cutting out!) and his temps where.......wait for it.............165 deg f / 75 ish deg C. Why? Because the clown had SLAPPED the paste on THICK combined with a weak spring on the HSF...a few more boot ups an he would have been looking at a new cpu and possibly a new mobo......