Creating simple flat counter over image

I was going to suggest looking at that example you mention for hints but looks like you had problems with that, anything specific?

Looks like you probably want to style the div that wraps all the digit divs that has a class of .jcw-odometer-div

Anyway an example probably illustrates this better, I just put this one together, the second example on this page is probably close to what you want:

https://demo.strawberryjellyfish.com/2015/03/06/round-counters/

Or if you want to use an image as a background, have a look at the last example on this page:

https://strawberryjellyfish.com/adding-borders-to-a-jellyfish-counter/