How to illustrate a drawing with text and two decorations

Question

How can I create a drawing like this:

The stuff in red are only explications (with "middle" I meant middle of the drawing representing the spiral) and should not be drawn. Tikz would be best, since I know a tiny little amount of it (which is more than other programs - of which I know nothing) and want to replace the spirals with some of my own decorations.

The text may seem large here, but actually I plan to use the standard font.

Here is a minimal working example (stripped with the LaTeX preambel, since I use LyX):

\begin{tikzpicture} 

\node[align=center]{text text text text \\ text text text text};
% To do: Place a picture here, whose middle is at equal distance between the top line of text and the bottom line and that has a "good-looking" distance from the text
% To do: Place the same picture with same distance requirements here; would be nice if it were mirrored, so I don't have to mirror it externally in a different program.
\end{tikzpicture} 

EDIT (since this was too big for a comment): Ok, modifying answer gives like this

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newlength\decorwidth
\setlength\decorwidth{1cm}

\newcommand\TextDecor[2]{%
  \par\smallskip\noindent%
  \parbox[c]{\decorwidth}{\includegraphics[width=.5\decorwidth]{#1}\hfill}%
  \parbox[c]{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\decorwidth\relax}{#2}%
  \parbox[c]{\decorwidth}{\hfill\includegraphics[width=.5\decorwidth]{#1}}\par\smallskip%
}

\begin{document}


\TextDecor{ornament1}{ \begin{center}text  text text  text\\ text text text  text\end{center}}

\end{document}

it now looks like this. In red is explained on thing I didn't manage to do:

Answer 1

Here's one possibility; I defined a newcommand \TextDecor with two mandatory arguments: the name of the file containing the decoration and the text to be decorated, and one optional argument controlling the separation between the decoration and the text (th deafult value is 10pt). The decorations are included using \includegraphics from the graphicx package.

The idea is to use three \parboxes with centered vertical alignment: two for the decorations and the middle one for the text; the width of the boxes containing the decorations is controlled by the length decorwidth (initially set to be 2cm); of course, you can change the definition of \TextDecor according to your needs:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newlength\decorwidth
\setlength\decorwidth{1.5cm}
\newlength\decorsep

\newcommand\TextDecor[3][10pt]{%
  \setlength\decorsep{#1}
  \par\smallskip\noindent%
  \parbox[c]{\decorwidth}{\includegraphics[width=\decorwidth]{#2}\hfill}%
  \hspace{\decorsep}%
  \parbox[c]{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\decorwidth-2\decorsep\relax}{#3}%
  \hspace{\decorsep}%
  \parbox[c]{\decorwidth}{\hfill\includegraphics[width=\decorwidth]{#2}}\par\smallskip%
}

\newcommand\Text{% some filler text for the example
Nam dui ligula, fringilla a, euismod sodales, sollicitudin vel, wisi. Morbi
auctor lorem non justo. Nam lacus libero, pretium at, lobortis vitae, ultricies et,
tellus. Donec aliquet, tortor sed accumsan bibendum, erat ligula aliquet magna,
vitae ornare odio metus a mi. Morbi ac orci et nisl hendrerit mollis.
}

\begin{document}

\Text
\TextDecor{ornament1}{\Text}
\Text
\TextDecor[30pt]{ornament2}{\Text}
\Text
\TextDecor[2pt]{ornament3}{\Text}
\Text

\end{document}

Answer 2

Here a suggestion using the package mdframed. To illustrate the ornaments I used the package pifont.

The relevant part are commented in the code. Other settings are documented in the manual.

Instead of using a font or picture you can also work with TikZ which is loaded by the the package mdframed.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[framemethod=tikz]{mdframed}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}

\usepackage{pifont}
\usepackage{kantlipsum}

\mdfdefinestyle{ornament}{%
  topline=false,bottomline=false,
 middlelinewidth=2cm, %width of the ornament
 middlelinecolor=white,
 innerleftmargin=.1cm,innerrightmargin=.1cm, %inner distance from ornament
 nobreak,
 singleextra={\path let \p1=(O), \p2=(P) in (\x1,.5*\y2) coordinate (Q);
                           \node at (Q) {\ornamentsetupI};
                           \node at (P|-Q) {\ornamentsetupI};}
}
\newcommand*\ornamentsetup[1]{\def\ornamentsetupI{#1}}


\newmdenv[style=ornament]{ornament}
\ornamentsetup{{\huge\ding{107}}}

\begin{document}

\begin{ornament}
\kant[1]\kant[1]\kant[1]
\kant[1]\kant[1]\kant[1]
\kant[1]\kant[1]\kant[1]
\end{ornament}


\end{document}